Best way to get/update the lastet dev release?

I suggest overwriting your installation with the latest fully packaged nightly tarball. Or, for more frequent updates, you can use Drush make.

Note that there's no official upgrade path between dev releases, though we haven't had anything yet that would break a site.

I am a relative newbie to drush and git and trying to figure out the best way to accomplish this. So apologies for any silly questions here, any pointers would be much appreciated.

Drush:
When doing this with drush make one would simply run "drush make build-commons.make" to update a 7.x-3.x installation?

Git:
Sofar I have tried to update with Git. I installed Commons with the git clone command. But know I notice that several modules are out of date yet git fetch doesn't seem to pick up the updates. All these modules have no version numbers listed when looking at the available updates page so perhaps there is an issue there. Example: Commons Profile (Social profile fields). Available updates says there is a 7.x-3.x-dev version now but git fetch doesn't pick it up. Am I overlooking something basic or is something else going on?

TIA,
Gerben

This are the steps to i do for update my Drupal Commons version:

#Download 
git clone --recursive --branch 7.x-3.x http://git.drupal.org/project/commons.git
cd commons

# Using drush make for generate the profile and download it into  ../commons-7.x-3.x
drush make --working-copy build-commons.make ../commons-7.x-3.x

#profit!  now in the commons-7.x-3.x folder do you have a complete version of Drupal Commons ready for be installed

Thanks for the reply. I have used git clone and drush make to install DC for the first time, are you saying you use this also for updating?

I used the same steps as Gnuget to install.
For update, I just do "git update && drush make --working-copy build-commons.make ../commons-7.x-3.x"
I then delete my current database and reinstall it :).
I need to make sure I dont have old data that triggers new bugs.

Thanks also for the info Pierre.

Hmm.. at the moment running the drush make off the 3.x dev version produces nothing in my destination folder. Does this work for anyone else?

I get all the make output:

commons$ drush make --working-copy build-commons.make ../commons-7.x-3.x
drupal-7.17 downloaded.
..
panelizer-7.x-3.x-dev downloaded.                                                                                                                                                         [ok]
File og-7.x-2.x-dev.tar.gz is corrupt (wrong md5 checksum).                                                                                                                               [error]
 >> cd: 1: can't cd to /tmp/make_tmp_1355506862_50cb64aedb99c/__build__/profiles/commons/modules/contrib/og
 >> cd: 1:
 >> can't cd to /tmp/make_tmp_1355506862_50cb64aedb99c/__build__/profiles/commons/modules/contrib/og
 >> 
Unable to patch og with og-add-group-message.patch.                                                                                                                                       [error]
 >> Project oauthconnector contains 2 modules: oauth2_common, oauthconnector.
..
Checked out branch 7.x-1.x.                                                                                                                                                               [ok]
timeago downloaded from https://raw.github.com/rmm5t/jquery-timeago/master/jquery.timeago.js.                                                                                             [ok]

But there is no ../commons-7.x-3.x folder and nothing else. Could be my drush version is outdated. Can someone who this works for tell me which version they're using?

drush version
drush version 5.4

No it did not work for me, I get the same exact result. I was able to get some other distro's built, but not Commons.

I believe there still might be an issue, so I hope there is not a problem marking this as active. This issue may be related Add a "permissions" subcommand to fix/set all file permissions. I don't think that this is a new issue, but it is an issue that I became aware of while trying to switch over to using Drush.

What led me to there was a watchdog error: "Failed to create style directory: public://styles/"

I do not know if this the right place for this question, and for that I apologize now, but here goes:
If you install the current version (7.x-3.0-beta1) later I can upgrade to the final version without problems?
thank you!

@JAnjos, this looks like a pretty good choice to me, although a quick search through the Commons issue queue didn't help me find a previous comment, I believe once the beta is declared stable enough, there will be an upgrade path. Feel free to test out beta1 and report back any issues to help get it stable sooner.
Here is one related issue.

• Can I use dev version to development use?

@Topcheese
thank you. I'll do that

How are people out there managing to do updates to latest commons dev while retaining any existing data on the site?

My users have entered data into 7.x-3.0-beta1 and are now asking for the dev release.

What strategy can I use to update to the dev release while taking the data with me?

I've been struggling with this one for a while, I'd be grateful for any help.

Well, I planned to use Backup and Migrate, but I have not used it yet because of the recent changes to the dev version. As a result of those changes, I have been doing a fresh install of the latest dev. I will probably try to update from a fresh install of the next Beta.

I installed the dev version and update that using drush.

The only problem there is that I have to update on a per module basis (If I try the normal update process I get this error: "The commons directory could not be found within the modules directory at /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/commons-dev/profiles/commons, perhaps the project is enabled but has been deleted from disk").

Anyway, apart from this taking a bit longer it works fine. I could not get my head around git so decided to abandon that for the moment.

Glad to hear you got your head round it in the end, would you mind closing the issue if its all sorted now?

Cheers

Tom

Closing this, feel free to reopen if others have questions.

Wanted to tell you that #4 was absolutely great! Greetings, Martijn

drupal-7.21 downloaded. [ok]

Unable to download [error]

http://drupal.org/files/spark-install-1780598-5.patch.
Unable to clone commons from [error]

http://git.drupal.org/project/commons.git.

used to work ... doesnt work on my centos box or windows 7 ..

Yeah, the last week i had exactly the same error.

But i don't sure if is related with commons it self or if is a network problem, the last week even i did can't open drupal.org nor git.drupal.org

fixed typo