Automatic plugin update kills .svn data

  • I can’t seem to find anything on this…

    I’m managing my wordpress install with subversion – no big deal, really. I export the latest from WP and then check my code into my own repository.

    For those who don’t know – under subversion control, every directory has a hidden directory called “.svn” where it keeps all it’s magic stuff.

    So… I updated a plugin using WP’s automatic update and now my subversion is very upset because it’s .svn folder is gone. Apparently, updating a plugin via the plugin manager just replaces the directory in question… which would be fine if it would preserve the .svn directory… but it doesn’t.

    So, those of you with more experience than me… any advice? Should I just abandon automatic updates? (yuck) Should I hack a file to make it preserve my .svn directory (if so where does that happen?). Or is there a better way I’m missing?

    Thanks!

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • Moderator Samuel Wood (Otto)

    (@otto42)

    www.remarpro.com Admin

    Generally, people update their installations using either one method or the other, not both. If you want to use subversion, then it’s best to check out plugins from their subversion repositories directly, and let it update the whole mess at once.

    The Plugins SVN is here: https://svn.wp-plugins.org/

    Thread Starter mediafetish

    (@mediafetish)

    So any plugin that’s available through the interface is also available through the repository you just gave me? Sweet! Thanks! I knew there was a better way!

    Thread Starter mediafetish

    (@mediafetish)

    Hoping that adding to this will bump it up – I have another question…

    Ok, so I want my plugins updating using externals, I’ve learned that. But one feature of the WP interface that I really love is that it will tell me when a plugin is out of date.

    If I install a plugin using externals I either have to use trunk or a specific tag… so – if I use trunk, there’s a good chance I’d be using unstable code but if I use a specific tag how will I know there’s a new version out without checking each one manually all the time?

    Does that make sense?

    Moderator Samuel Wood (Otto)

    (@otto42)

    www.remarpro.com Admin

    Depends on the plugin author and how he does things.

    The notification thing *should* work regardless of everything. However how you perform the update is different depending on whether the author tags his releases or not.

    Many don’t tag releases and just use trunk for everything. This is simplest and for simple plugins it’s the most common method. Some authors use tags to tag individual versions, however whether or not those versions are the “current” ones depends on the author’s whims.

    The way you can tell is the “Stable tag:” in the readme.txt file. If it says a version number, then the latest version is in the tags directory, with trunk being “development”. If it says “trunk” or is missing, then the trunk directory is the latest version.

    Branches is not generally used (and is never used by the automatic systems here), however the convention has to do with the numbering scheme. A 2.7 branch will have the latest 2.7.* version in it, like 2.7.1 or 2.7.2, etc. This may or may not be a development version. In WordPress’s case, it’s a development version of that specific branch. When a release is made, that branch gets copied to a tagged version.

    So… generally speaking, you can get away with using trunk, unless a plugin gets a lot of updates, in which case check the Stable Tag in the readme.

    Thread Starter mediafetish

    (@mediafetish)

    Cool – I appreciate your feedback. Developing WP with svn can be really cool but also pretty damned intimidating once it gets complicated.

    Anyway – thanks for your time!

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
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