[Rt-devel] Upgrade path (Re: Release date of 3.8?)

[Tim Cutts]

On 7 Jul 2008, at 1:26 pm, Jesse Vincent wrote:

>
>
>
> On Mon, Jul 07, 2008 at 12:25:58PM +0200, Richard Hartmann wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I do _not_ want to hurry anyone or to create needless pressure.
>> I just wanted to ask what the current ETA of 3.8 is. I remember
>> Jesse talking about the week of the 7th, which is why I am asking.
>
> There are a few tiny issues I still need to see resolved. And the  
> churn
> on the 3.8 trunk has been a bit heavier than I'd like (though it's all
> bugfixes and fairly obviously necessary improvements).
>
> I'm hoping to get an RC out today. After that, it's up to you guys.  
> If I
> get a bunch of positive reports back, the release could be 'pretty
> quick'

I realise this is the developers' list rather than a users' list,  but  
I was wondering whether you could advise on my upgrade path with RT.   
Currently my production RT system is still running RT 3.4.2.  I have  
made a few local customisations, but these are all in the user  
interface, and properly separated from the base code.  I also added  
LDAP authentication.  Nothing I have done has caused a schema change,  
though.  So that's the background.

I've been conscious for some time of the need to upgrade our RT  
system, but I am somewhat daunted by the procedure that is going to be  
required.  Is it going to be possible to upgrade to 3.8 in one go, or  
will I need to go to 3.6 first and then upgrade that to 3.8?

Are there any procedure documents around to help me go through this?   
I was planning something along the lines of:

1)  Make a snapshot of the current system to practice on.
2)  Upgrade that system to RT 3.[68] without any of my customisations
3)  Add back any customisations which are necessary (I suspect some,  
like the LDAP integration, are now part of the standard RT aren't they?)
4)  Make the new system live

Now, the problem I have with this is that the time between 1 and 4 is  
likely to be long, and in the mean time dozens of new tickets will  
have been created in the old system.  How would I re-synchronise the  
two, given that the schemas of the two RT installations would almost  
certainly be different?  A really nasty option would be to use  
RTx::Shredder to actually delete the tickets from the old instance,  
and then use the .sql dump it creates to load those tickets and  
transactions into the new RT.  Would that work, or am I likely to be  
bitten by schema changes again?

Thanks in advance for your opinions...

Regards,

Tim


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