version upgrade questions

[digihorse]

When one is doing a version upgrade, between lets say 4.0b and 4.0d community, it is documented that one need only replace the WAR files in the Tomcat/webapps folder.  Ok, this has worked in updating 4.0 to a, b, and c.  However, I'm finding it fails, or appears to fail when going from c to 4.0d as when I check in /alfresco/ system properties, the version of the app/build does not update. 

Now you can remove the existing /alfresco folder that is the unpacked war, however, if you so do, you loose any customizations you have done inside the WEB-INF areas for things like content modeling. 

So the questions would be: 
1. where would one verify that indeed the new war has been upacked and loaded by tomcat on the restart and
2.  what is the best way to preserve customizations when you must remove the /webapps/alfresco folder.

[mrogers]

1 - delete the webapp/alfresco and the working/alfresco folder.      Then you know nothing from the old webapp remains.
2 -never change anything in the WEB-INF folder.

[digihorse]

1 - delete the webapp/alfresco and the working/alfresco folder.      Then you know nothing from the old webapp remains.
2 -never change anything in the WEB-INF folder.

Hmm…  You have repeatedly said the above again and again in the forums, ignoring the directions on the wikis and other to do exactly that to create customizations.  If, as you say, one should never edit anything in the WEB-INF folder, how does one go about creating customizations, such as custom content models?  Its  only helpful for someone to preach against the written documentation when that someone offers an alternative that works as well.  I'm happy to have more information, as I'm sure others would be.

Thank you

[scouil]

Most of the documentation I've seen advise to update files in <tomcat home>/shared/classes/* and put libs in <tomcat home>/shared/lib .
Most server configuration is done in <tomcat home>/shared/classes/alfresco-global.properties and adding a new content model would be in <tomcat home>/shared/classes/alfresco/extension/

Directly modifying in the WEB-INF sure works since those are the source files but a clean customization is done in  <tomcat home>/shared/
If for some reason you have to modify something in WEB-INF/ , be sure to document it somewhere locally to be able to do these changes again once you upgrade your version.
Could you please link to the said documentation and/or update it if it's still advising to modify WEB-INF/* ?

Now that you have to upgrade, maybe you could try dowloading your old version vanilla in another folder and try to apply a recursive diff on both your folder to highlight the changes that might have been done. Once you notice what they are and what they're for, try to port them to the appropriate <tomcat home>/shared/* section.

Good luck on your upgrade.

[mrogers]

Thank you Scouil

[digihorse]

Ok, thanks for quick response. (I actually have many clean installs of the various versions of Alfresco floating around as tests  :twisted: )

Can any file that is found within WEB-INF be altered and put into the shared/classes/alfresco instead?  What about the repository.properties? Seems I remember reading that one should be able to put "any" config parameters in to the alfresco-global.properties file. Yes?

Will hunt down those links to post too.

Thanks again.