Hello koha-devel, Last week, I explained on #koha I wanted to propose a new database update mecanism [1]. Here is my proposal, I would like some feedbacks before coding... The idea is to simplify communication between developers on database update (data and/or structure). Here follow the main points of the mecanism: - isolated updates that can be executed only once - database self aware about its update level - notification in intranet screen that new updates are available A script update/updater.pl is run from the command line. The steps are: 1. list updates already executed (reading table "updates") 2. list available updates (numeric filenames in update/updates directory) 3. execute available updates that have not been executed yet These are the basics. updater.pl will first say if there are updates to execute. For example: $ updater.pl

2 updates are missing, choose an option:

1. list update details 2. execute all 3. execute one by one

[1] ?

updater.pl will write a log on each call. Update files will be Perl files in the update/updates dedicated directory, with numeric only filenames: $ ls -v1 updates

1 2 2.1 10

About numerotation of updates, on HEAD, updates are named with a single number (1, 2, 10...), on a branch like rel_2_2, updates are named with the last update number on HEAD point a number wich starts to 1 on rel_2_2. Just as an example, we could have: +------+ | HEAD | +------+ | | +---------+ | | rel_2_2 | 43 => | +---------+ 44 => | | +-----------+ | | <= 44.1 | | 45 => | | | | <= 44.2 46 => | | | | | | <= 44.3 | | 47 => | | | | | | | | 48 => | | <= 44.4 | | <= 44.5 49 => | | 50 => | | +---------+ 51 => | | rel_3_0 | 52 => | +---------+ 53 => | | +-----------+ 54 => | | <= 53.1 | | 55 => | | <= 53.2 | | | | | | <= 53.3 | Now, let's give me your feedback please :-) [1] http://tinyurl.com/ep6nx Cheers, -- Pierrick LE GALL INEO media system