Figure out the upgrade strategy for the distribution

I didn't know about this, but D7 supports hook_update_N() in profiles. Should be a slam-dunk...

I experimented with this and had no trouble with creating a hook_update_N(). Perhaps you wanted something more than that - if so, let me know what is needed for a strategy.

Or perhaps you're talking about how to update all module code and then update.php... The update.php is easy enough in this case.

I'm going to propose an installation technique in the other issue.

It turns out that upgrading modules that are part of a profile is also quite good these days. Drush does it well, update module does the right thing, and even the in-place update stuff works with it. So I think we can do everything we need to do.

See also my comments in #1232790-7: Updating included modules.

Which I disagreed with there, after testing :-)

Randy / Ryan,

According to Drupal Installation Profile Documentation, "Please note that an installation profile can only be used when you're installing a new Drupal instance. This means that you can not run an installation profile on an existing Drupal to add extra functionality."

I don't think we should position Drupal Commerce Kickstart as an upgradeable experience. I say we recommend they move the modules directory and upgrade their site from that point on.

Welcome here, @joshmiller!

I did some testing and find that upgrading modules in the install profile directory works fine, and Drupal reports on them correctly. The "upgradeable experience" part refers to the fact that if Kickstart provides new features or configurations in the future, there's no way to get those into an existing install. In other words, once you install it, you have what you have (from a config perspective). However, from a code perspective, upgrading works fine.

@rfay!! :)

What if we were to create and depend on a custom module concept for this installation -- maybe we call it "kickstart_upgrades" and only make it available to help with upgrading configuration functionality?

Yeah, the idea is that someone could just get the latest version of Kickstart to update any of the modules included in Kickstart. I'd just as soon do them individually myself. I do wonder if the hooks implemented in the .profile module are available post-installation. Would be good to nail down that that's not the case, otherwise it could provide a reason to update the installation profile itself.

@joshmiller, I wouldn't want an upgrade module to change my store's configuration. I'd want to be in control of that...

As a thought, how about have the installation profile for Commerce Kickstart just do the initial installation, then remove the profile for future module and/or Drupal core upgrades? Then again, I admit Commerce Kickstart is the first installation profile that we have used here with a Drupal project, thus the possible issues associated with such removal are also unknown.

For module upgrades (using the 7.x-1.0-rc6 of 29 Nov 2011) what we encountered was an issue in not copying over the "drupal/profiles" directory in addition to the "drupal/sites" directory as noted Updating included modules, comment #1. The error was the same included dependency of Chaos Tools with the installation profile it seems. After copying this directory over (hence, DO remember to backup files BEFORE upgrades!) the site seems to be upgraded and functioning normally (granted, this is a test or sandbox site as well).

I'm about to try an upgrade through Aegir. Will let you know how that goes :-)

@Robin Millette: How did you do, and which steps did you take?

@lsolesen Aegir seperates platforms (distributions/profiles) and sites (things with URLs). I had an old Kickstart site. I downloaded and unpacked a new kickstart. Then I asked my Aegir to clone my original site using the new platform (the new kickstart). I didn't test things a whole lot, but this generally works very well.

If I'm not mistaken, this has already been decided and documented - that sites built using the distribution should be updating the entire distribution. If this has been documented sufficiently, let's just close this issue out.

Relevant: http://drupal.org/node/1821484#comment-6642276

This now appears on the Kickstart 2 Install & Upgrade Guide:

http://www.drupalcommerce.org/commerce-kickstart-2/install

Josh