Drupal 7 latest core or keep reading...

As a Drupal developer there is one major issue that concerns me a lot.

Drupal Core updates. These are the updates from one release to a more recent one, usually the latest (eg from 7.22 to 7.24). Some call them minor version upgrades since the major version (7.x for uor example) is not changing.

One could say that other project updates are also a headache but there are more options for that since this can be done through UI. But for core there is nothing we can do through UI and there is already an issue for that. Many people believe that this is a huge drawback for Drupal while other CMS like Joomla and WordPress do have update upgrade files archives and the later has an update manager through UI.

I know that I can use Drush and $ drush up drupal command, I know that I can use git, I know also that I can use a patch (and yes someone does that for us too!) and get the latest version. I really like Drush here! I could even pay for Drush if it was a paid software!

But, what if we do not have Drush, git and shell access or we do not have enough time to set them up on a bad and unsupported server? Normally, we do not always choose the hosting nor our customers ask for our preferable hosting service. This is a common sense, customers prefer cheap hosting (and we have to work with these tools too!)

So, in this case we must follow the usual update process described with details into the UPGRADE.txt file inside drupal folder.

For this - manual update - method I created a github drupal core fork that contains only the latest stable release where I removed:

  • the whole 'sites' folder
  • all the *.txt files on root
  • .htaccess file on root

You may think here I should only remove robots.txt file and not others. But several Drupal developers consider this as a low level security risk and talk about it on a D.O. issue. In any case I do not need them after 6 years with Drupal!

Now, get the latest Drupal core update files: Drupal 7 latest core

​I will also publish new releases through my twitter account.