Amahi Forums

This is something like the ability for the user to "upgrade" to a newer version of an app rather than having to uninstall/reinstall to get the newest version, and have to go through either setting up all there settings again or backing up their data then importing.

Applications would need to be packaged twice, once for a clean install and once for an upgrade. The upgrade button would export the data/files/whatever from the old version of the app and import it to the new app. This should not be too difficult because most apps do not change their DB structure too much between versions. Some apps also include upgrade instructions.

Once an application has a newer version that is packaged, lock the old version to keep users from installing it - only give the option to install the new one.

Users will also need to be prompted of a new version either like apple does it on the iphone/itouch (this would be ideal but hard to integrate in a web interface) or just a pop-up/browser message drop down stating that a new version is avaliable, head on over to Applications > Upgrade to upgrade your app.

Here is a list of apps that need updating, or are in the progress of being updated.

Ideas?

yah, thi is a good idea, but it's hard. once we identify a pattern, we can start testing on it.
there may be some types of updates taht may be easy.

like some cases will be DB-forward-compatible. no need to touch the db. that would be easier

so, in this case:

- the packager would need to identify and test this case
- the installer would have to be able to do updates on the fly

other cases may be harder.

How about an option when removing an app to leave data intact? This would let us uninstall, then put in the new version of the app, and still have the data + settings. Is that inviting trouble?

Maybe a way to "back up" and "restore" an apps data and settings? If I had a lot of apps and upgrade to a new version of Fedora and Amahi, I wouldn't want to have reconfigure the apps too, especially if they have a lot of data.

I'm sure there are ways to do this manually but Dashboard control would "nice" - for some it may be essential, I don't know. But then I also don't have any clue as to how much work it would take to implement.

Anything to make upgrades easier would be welcome.

hmm exporting a backup of your data shouldn't prove to hard; a mysqldump can be scripted after an uninstall.
The hardest part is indeed the structure: will a newer version accept the old database values or place them in the correct fields. Most apps have some compatibility layer for this.

Actually, this is implemented in a basic way. Just not documented.

We can automate it further, no doubt.

So many features ... so little time

Anyone interested in helping document, test and or spearhead this?

go to IRC and grab bigfoot65 (if he's not soo overloaded), may be able to help.
maybe he can document a bit here. and you can document it in the wiki?

not all apps that have a db are done. a few that are easy to upgrade this way, iiuc.

We indeed have a way to backup app data for upgrades. Many of the live apps have the code to backup your data on uninstall, then import it on reinstall. Some will automatically the database if needed. There are a few which prompt you to update on install as well.

Given this, the code used is basically a mysqldump. You can also backup the databases for apps using one the Amahi apps, Adminer, phpMySql, and MyBackup. The database name is typically the same as the app shortcut.

If there are specific apps you are concerned about Dogzrule, please let us know and we can tell you if there is a database and if it has a backup option employed on uninstall. Eventually I would like to do this with all apps, but it's going to take some time.

Hope that helps.