How To Prevent Losing Your Changes Before Upgrading

When upgrading, the only changes you will lose are those that were made to actual core files. Files that didn't come with the core such as third party files are not deleted or overwritten by an upgrade.

If you modified core files we recommend you turn them into vMods.

How To Transfer Your Modifications Into vMods

vMod is a virtual modification technology developed uniquely for LiteCart that leaves your core files unaltered. Here is how you can turn your hardcoded changes into vMods:

  1. Download an unmodified zipped archive of LiteCart (same version as you are running). And unzip it on your local drive.
  2. Use a file comparison software such as WinMerge to compare the untouched set of files against your modified set of files.
  3. Files that show conflicts are assumingly files you have modified. Create a vMod that performs the same changes and restore your modified files to the originals. See: How To Create a vMod
  4. You are now good to go and can easily carry modifications between platform updates.

How To Adapt To Git

If you don't want to transfer your modifications into vMods you have the option to adapt your project to Git. Using Git you can pull all LiteCart updates with a command and Git will merge them with your modified work.

See How To Adapt To Git

If none of the above will work for you

If you don't want to turn your mods into vMods, nore want to adapt to Git. Then hard manual work might be the only way for you. But with the use of a file comparison software it gets the job done easy.

  • Clone the production platform into an identical development platform. Both the files and the database. Make sure to update includes/config.inc.php.

  • Upgrade the development platform to the latest stable LiteCart version.

  • Use comparison software for files and folders like WinMerge to compare the two platforms with eachother.

  • Transfer your hard modifications mods line by line from the production platform to the development.

  • Make sure everything in the development plaform is running fine.

  • Upgrade the production platform.

  • Copy your modified files from development to the production.

See Also

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