Automatic updates
Are you, as a merchant or an agency, constantly struggling with keeping Magento updated? There always seems to be an update from the Payment Service Provider, a Shipping Provider, or one of the extension vendors. How do you keep that manageable?
We have developed a procedure for this. Together with our Continuous Integration setup, we can provide automatic upgrades for Magento shops.
Why would I want this?
We get it. Every six months, a patch or major release of Magento is available. That is a good time to update everything, right? It might. But what about that annoying bug with your shipping integration? It might already be fixed in a newer version. What if that was installed automatically, and the bug all of a sudden disappears? Wouldn't that be great?
And what about security? If there is a security leak in one of your extensions, are you actively notified? We often find that a critical bug is discovered, and everyone is informed about the bug in a specific version; however, our customers are already on the patched version. It prevents unauthorized people from accessing your systems.
It sounds scary
We are well aware. And we won't just turn it on. We will only do that when you have faith in the setup. It can take a moment to get up to that point. We start with getting confidence in the setup. When the tests are running and proving their value, we can go to the next step. This step involves getting an intern or someone else who is unfamiliar with the setup. Let them merge a pull request for an update. If we get to this level of confidence, it's time for the next step: Enabling automatic updates.
How do you handle Magento updates?
Well, here's the thing: We don't. We'll handle updates for just about everything, but we won't enable updates for Magento. We want you to check this yourself. But here is the thing: When a new version of Magento is released, you will get a pull request that is already tested. So, you know what is working, and possibly what isn't. It saves you a lot of time checking all the basic stuff and gets right to the nitty-gritty.
But what is updated then?
To understand this, you need to understand that Magento isn't just Magento. It is a comprehensive web of packages that together make up Magento. For testing, Magento relies on PHPUnit, for example. For checking the code styling, there is CodeSniffer. And you probably have a Payment Provider in there. And possibly a shipping provider. ERP? Custom extensions? Warehouse management? The list goes on and on and on. And all those dependencies require regular updates as well.