How to upgrade dotProject?

[aperreault2024]

Hello,

We use dotProject at work, version 2.1.5 with PHP 5.5.9. I'm trying to upgrade to a more recent version, with great difficulty. We have quite a few custom modules and lots of data that needs to be transfered. As of now, I have tried to directly upgrade to PHP 7.x, but that results in lots of errors and warnings, mostly about function declarations.

So, instead, I tried running the new version using the provided docker-compose file, which works fine. However, if I try to overwrite the database that was created with our own, then it stops working. Here are the steps I took:

1. Run the docker
2. Overwrite the database using MySQL Workbench
3. Go to localhost/install

When I try to do the install, I get lots of errors because the tables are already created. Then, when going back to the home page, I get the login box, but if I try to login, nothing happens. No error message either.

I've been trying to upgrade for days now, nothing seems to work. Can anyone enlighten me? What is the proper procedure to upgrade and keep our data? That's really all I want, once that's done, I can take care of updating our custom modules. Thanks.

[nbkhwjm]

I am also running a very large DotProject system with many custom modules. You are going to need to iterate it through each version to get it where you want to be. Your custom modules will also need to be updated as well i'm sure. Here is what we did.

• Duplicated the existing system on a development only system. Code and DB, PHP, Mysql versions, everything.
• incremented PHP
• Checked for obvious bugs
• incremented MYSQL
• Checked for obvious bugs
• Repeat
• Do fixes as required

As the system got to a state where we could run in production, we updated the production system with the new code, versions and updated the DB (the DB is more complicated but you get the idea).

Many people have strategies for this, but with this system we find that the codebase hasn't really been updated consistently, so often bugs are obscured and hard to detect, additionally we can step it forward over time and not have a huge long term project to bring it to the latest and greatest... it works for us resource wise.

We are currently at PHP Version 7.4.33 / Mysql 8.0.41

We have a working Version on PHP 8+ but were are still testing. We haven't really identified the "best" branch to move forward with as far as collaborating on code updates, so we just started our own, like everyone else did.. since there doesn't seem to be a lot of interest is moving the core project forward.

[aperreault2024]

Thanks for the reply. So you did not update dotProject directly? Only PHP and MySQL? I've found that there are quite a lot of issues with function declarations not matching the parent type once you start upgrading PHP. You fixed those manually?

This is why I wanted to start from the newest version of dotProject, as all these problems are already fixed. But if it's really not possible, I guess I'll just bite the bullet and fix it myself.

[nbkhwjm]

We are running the latest dot project available, with a number of fixes found on other branches around and also fixed/updated alot of stuff ourselves..

The latest available DP won't run properly in the latest PHP, that's the issue. We needed to get to a point where we could reasonably run on a supported version of PHP/MySql, so we iterated to get it there fixing issues along the way.

[aperreault2024]

But did you start from the latest dotProject version? As I said in my issue, we're running version 2.1.5 while the current version on master is 2.2.0. I already made a docker containing our existing setup, should I first update dotProject to 2.2.0, or just update PHP and MySQL in small increments?

I have to admit, I did not try running 2.2.0 with our current DB, I only tried the dlevel branch. I could try that and see if it works, then update PHP and MySQL.

[nbkhwjm]

Update to the latest with the existing db (after a backup) and leave php and mysql as they are.

Check for issues, resolve as necessary.

Update php to the next rev (not latest)

Recheck for issues, resolve as necessary

Update mysql

Check for issues resolve as necesary..

Repeat until you are where you want to be.. we are at php 7x and stopped as we are still resolving some issues..

[aperreault2024]

I see, thanks for the help!