[OPEN-ILS-DEV] Documentation question: restoring customizations after upgrade

[Dan Scott]

On Wed, 2010-01-13 at 08:44 -0500, Soulliere, Robert wrote:
> Hi Evergreen Community,
> 
>  
> 
> In reviewing at the upgrading instructions, I would like to add
> information on restoring customizations made to a local Evergreen
> system after completing the upgrade and would like to find the best
> procedures to accomplishing this? 
> 
>  
> 
> Is it possible to safely use diff/patch commands on the
> entire /openils directory or to accomplish this in a few commands? 
> 
>  
> 
> For example could the user do the following:
> 
>  
> 
> 1)     Use diff to create patch for customizations on /openils
> directory before upgrade and while running 1.4 
> 
> 2)     Upgrade to 1.6
> 
> 3)     Patch files in /openils directory to restore the customizations
> they made to files. 
> 
>  
> 
> Would this work or does the user need to use several  targeted patches
> such as one to update the default OPAC and a different one to update
> Perl scripts?
> 
>  
> 
> Could anyone share a set of precise universal  diff/patch commands
> they use or are there better methods to restore customizations after
> an upgrade? 
> 
>  

Hi Robert:

At Conifer, I worked up a rough system for maintaining a patched
Evergreen system using a combination of SVN and a poorly written shell
script.

Basically, the process and script works like this:

  0. a. (Outside the script): Backup your existing /openils directory
and Evergreen database. This way, if disaster happens, you can roll back
with your tail between your legs having only suffered a bit of downtime.
 
  0. b. (Outside the script): Install your new version of Evergreen
to /openils/ and apply the SQL schema updates.

  1. Checkout / update the SVN checkout of our customized files. The
files are maintained in SVN in a parallel structure to Evergreen's
install structure; so
svn_root/branches/rel_1_6_0/var/circ/circ_duration.js would be our
customized version of what would be installed by default
to /openils/var/circ/circ_duration.js

  2. Export the SVN files to an export directory to avoid polluting your
install directory with the gross .svn subdirectories.

  3. Walk through the parallel structure of the files from SVN and copy
them over top of the corresponding files in /openils

  4. For skins, we take a slightly different and more complex tack. For
each skin, we try to maintain only the minimum set of customized files.
Roughly speaking, for each skin "foo", we copy the entire contents of
the default skin into our new /openils/var/web/opac/skin/foo directory,
then copy the customized skin/foo files from SVN over top of the
corresponding /openils files, then munge all of the internal links that
point to /default/ to /foo/ (no sense in keeping all of these files in
SVN for an easily automated change), then munge some of the JavaScript
variables to meet our preferences for that skin.

Oh, for the XUL thing we have very few customizations, but we
maintain /openils/var/web/xul/current/ as a symlink that points to our
true current staff client and overlay a file or too there.

That's pretty much it. Obviously you want to diff each of the files in
your SVN repo against the new versions of the files in the upcoming
release to ensure that you're not missing out on major new
functionality, etc.

Our customizations start at
http://svn.open-ils.org/trac/ILS-Contrib/browser/conifer/branches/rel_1_6_0 and the old semi-automated update script I wrote is at http://svn.open-ils.org/trac/ILS-Contrib/browser/conifer/branches/rel_1_6_0/tools/patch_conifer.sh - it's badly in need of updating and polishing, though, so be warned.