Keep your Drupal 5.x site up to date with Update Status module

:O You guys are my heroes! ...This is even better than I thought, it actually makes managing a lot of modules easy *deletes bookmarks* Whats this? A link straight to the tar file!? *passes out*

Thanks a lot for this useful module. I am installing it on my sites; it will save me a lot of time (checking for updates on drupal.org) and will make my sites more secure and up to date.

http://www.econlink.com.ar

Very god work, I've been following the developement of this module on your blog.

I really hope this encourages module developers to release more official releases! (Some do, but many are just using the -dev versions.)

Another compelling reason to upgrade to 5.0. (Wish i had enough free time to do it now.)

Question: Will this module send the admin an eMail if updates are found?

Thanks, merlin. This will be very useful for the Übercart project.

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Übercart -- One cart to rule them all.

i understnad that this module should not show up new updates that are betas and are not yet official releases. but i think it should still search for updates of modules that are already installed and are a beta version but an official release is already online.

i hope that makes sence, some one reword it to make sence if not.

This works great, but I now need to update a few modules, for example; Simplenews from 5.x-1.0 to 5.x-1.1
What is the correct process to update modules? does the older module need to be un-installed first?
Sorry, I'm new to Drupal and never updated before!

Thanks for your help guys, I think I'll stick to using 7-zip and filezilla for the time being!

...One step at a time...

Well done, Merlin! This functionality was much needed and marks an important usability improvement for Drupal.

Hopefully a core patch comes out of this eventually. I'd love to include this functionality in the next Drupal release as part of the system.module.

and i can add tons of feature request (logging to syslog, password protected rss feed) for it but for now this is ***great***. we have to find a way to bypass security problems for autoupdating (staging server? ftp? dns hacks? ssl?). but boy is this great!

--
groets
bert boerland

Excellent module,
makes life a lot easier!

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I can think of a few much needed features. Since update does not recognize dev versions, it incorrectly assumes that any dev version is older than an "official" version. It would be nice to have a checkbox to say either, "this module is newer" or "ignore this module"

This feature is needed since update pulls up the red alert boxes whenever it finds an old version. We need to adjust update so it's accurate. Otherwise, it's human nature to start to ignore the red box if one has a dev version of a module.

Excellent! This module can be really usefull.
Wish to see 4.7.x version too (if it's possible).
Thanks you.
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themegarden.org

I like this module very much, and I hope drupal.org will not collapse under the heavy traffic, when the whole world starts to check module statuses.

I know these are very small files, but there are too many drupal sites. It just remained me the old post when sf.net asked the dc++ developer to remove version.xml from the sf site when the version checking was first implemented in dc++. The file is back on sourceforge, so it can work smoothly. But you know: better safe than sorry..

now there is a great reason to upgrade to 5.1!

Will you create statistics of module/version usage, and make it publicly available?

In October of 2006, I had thought about building up my site with 4.7.x contributed modules and upgrading to 5.x sometime in the spring of 2007. Now, I keep telling myself that I made the right choice in choosing 5.x and dropping 4.7.x when I did, even though at the time there weren't very many 5.x contributed modules available for downloading and 5.x was still going through a lot of testing. Basically, I took a leap of faith into the deep end of the pool with 5.x and I am SO happy I did so!

It's because of functionality such as that provided by the Update Status module that I know for a fact I made the right choice in going with 5.x. As good as 4.7.x is, I can't imagine still being on that version, and 4.7.x is still a really good version.

Earl (Merlinofchaos), Derek (dww), Nedjo, and a few other folks have, again, done an absolutely outstanding job with yet another awesome module!!! The developers keep amazing me with these incredibly useful tools and it makes me want to yell, "Drupal rocks!" or "Drupal is da bomb!" or Drupal kicks *ss!"

Walt Esquivel, MBA; MA; President, Wellness Corps; Captain, USMC (Veteran)
$50 Hosting Discount Helps Projects Needing Financing

Very good module, I was waiting for this..., more now that we have a lot of Drupal sites.

Thanks.

Is this different from the Release Monitor?

Drupal's so easy, even I could do it.

Thank you guys!!!

Excellent idea!!!

Congratulation Guys! Y'all Just Saved My Time!
"Hello from Malaysia! ^^ "
Website: www.indiecom.net
Skype: ga1984

I don't know why development versions don't indicate the stage (for example, if the last official release is 5.x-1.3, I would expect next development version to be 5.x-1.3.1-dev or 5.x-1.4-dev, as it is quite standard with any SW today...), but it would make things much more simple in all aspects. If also any new development version would have at least a minor digit higher than the previous one, even new development versions could be recognized.

In this case, I would suggest only an option to select on a per module basis - weather to follow also development versions or not. OK, maybe another option, to automatically update bugfixes, which should perform as the previous module (recognized by the same major digit and just increased minor digit), but warn administrator in case there are any functional differences which might request any other action (new or reviewed settings, changes about some other module or database etc.).

This module was certainly missing, as upgrades are complicated when a lot of modules are installed.
Thanks ! =O)

Thanks to the developers of this module!

I just have one question. Imagine you are working with Drupal 5.x and 6.x is released. I'm sure it will tell you that a new version is available. Will it also tell you which of the modules you are using in 5.x that are already updated to 6.x?

Many thanks.

I've installed it, seen it in action, done some updates.
But problems w Views Bonus pack. Update links to official release, from Nov; even when I installed, complaints re needing to update. Looking again, I notice the Nov version has just six items, latest dev version 26, which seems far more exciting.
____________________________
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Anyone got a screenshot ?

Marcel
http://www.bigvertiser.com
http://www.computingnews.com

This is another great leap forward for Drupal.

The only 2 things missing now are

- auto-update feature from CVS - so stable releases of modules can be applied automatically
- an email to the admin every morning telling him what was updated and that he can go back to bed for another 2 hours :-)

cheers,christoph

--- http://www.cemper.com
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Thank you so much!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ben
Benofsky Park.com

That is a great news. Makes it easier to handle all the updates. Thanks a lot!

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Thanks,
this module saved my time very much.

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http://arthuran.net

Great Job! What else can be good news other than this to the common people like me who is "almost" reluctant to run update.php and change the "TRUE FALSE" line every month or like that.

I am certainly going to install it. So that it works like the cron.php.

WebMaster
http://www.geotechnical.org/
"We have been working on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering".

Next step would be automatically installing these updated modules. Just like extensions in Mozilla Firefox.

I would like to pose a question.

What is better from performance perspective? Load modules from module files or load module code from database like mysql?

Because if drupal moves away from loading modules from a file to storing them in DB it will elevate the security risk of having a writable modules folder on your server and therefore it will become more secure to have a built in module update system. I am sure drupal team can find more pros and cons with this system and i would greatly appreciate if some one does a study as to which approach is better.

i would push this idea to the core drupal developers but i am relatively new here and dont know all the right people, if some one that reads this does know the key people please send them my suggestion if you find it viable.

Many modules needs to come out of -dev release for this to work (at least most of what I use)

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Cheers,
Sivanandhan, P. (a.k.a. apsivam)
www.apsivam.in

This is great, although as stated, those that use dev modules won't benefit greatly.

Automatic updates? IMO, we are not quite there yet.
Hummm... this might work for some good stable modules. But so many out there are in a perpetual dev.
I then wish there was an automatic downgrade too for some. ;-)

Merlinofchaos, your Update Status module is very very useful. Like most of your other modules.
I mainly use it to pinpoint quickly where I am with releases of all the modules installed. Mostly for reporting purposes.

The following is a little off topic but still... :

How many times did I have to downgrade in order to keep the basic functionalities of some modules after loosing them through an upgrade.
And countless hours lost trying to find which is the best recent release. Unfortunately, not always the most recent...

I am extremely grateful for all the work done, but not all developers have the same discipline like you do.
How many times the release notes are empty or not showing us the list of bugs that should have been corrected long ago before adding any new kind of functionality.

By the way, your release notes are top notch.

Either some modules are not tested well enough or too hard to test (still buggy and being released too soon or too often), either some never get to maturity fast enough maybe due to lack of time or interest.

As long as statistics are not gathered about their good overall functionality, it seems impossible to rely on an "automatic system".

The future... maybe?

Impossible unless some kind of system (Quality Measurements maybe incorporated in Update Status??? why not?) that would allow the users (or some category of users like "official beta testers") to note and award points for each released modules to certify that they are good (and that they retain and preferably improve the most wanted functionalities) and that those stats become available to ALL the users.

Ok... after giving it some thought, this is an official new functionality request to add to your module ;-)

I wish and I hope. Let the revolution start... (or continue...).

Still faithful while digging the list of bugs and support requests of several others.

Cheers.

Another great reason to upgrade to 5.0. I wish i had the time to do it now. Will this module send the admin an email if updates are found?

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MacMillanOline Directory

Thanks a lot, but i cant install it?! help me please

Here's a newbie question: I've installed the Update Status module and it tells me I should upgrade from Drupal 5.5 to 5.7. The comments in this forum would suggest simply untarring the drupal 5.7 tarball in the 5.5 directory, I guess. But, won't that wreck all my configuration under 5.5? E.g., I've got a bunch of contributed modules under my sites directory, but the 5.7 has a sites directory, but not the new modules. Is there some special way to untar this?

Thanks in advance, Peter