Upgrading Bumblebee

The instructions on how to upgrade Bumblebee depend on what version of Bumblebee you currently have installed and what version of Bumblebee you wish to upgrade to.

All versions within the 1.y.z series have the same database format so upgrading is fairly easy.

Upgrading within the 1.0 series

These upgrades are fairly easy to do:

1. Download the current stable version of Bumblebee
2. Backup your entire installation (the files on your webserver as well as the database.
3. Replace all the files on your webserver with the new ones from the archive except those in the config, theme and system-inc directories (if you have customised them). Additionally, overwrite the config/config.php file with the new version.
4. If you accidentally overwrote the config/*.ini, theme or system-inc files, then you have your backup from Step 2, don't you. Now's a good time to restore them.
5. Go through the configuration file config/bumblebee.ini that came with the new version to see if there are any new goodies that you'd like to enable and make changes to your installations config/bumblebee.ini to enable these new features.
6. Log on to your upgraded installation and test it out.
7. Remember to delete the install directory from the installation once you're happy it's working as the the scripts within this directory can be used to find out your database login details.

Upgrading to 1.1 developer snapshots

Since the 1.1 series uses a compatible database format to the 1.0 series, there is not a lot that you have to do differently to the instructions above. There is, however, an upgrade wizard is also provided to help with the task; of course the upgrade wizard can't really replace files for you on the server, so this is really just the start of the infrastructure for later, more serious upgrades.

1. Download the current developer snapshot version of Bumblebee
2. Backup your entire installation (the files on your webserver as well as the database.
3. Replace all the files on your webserver with the new ones from the archive except those in the config, theme and system-inc directories (if you have customised them). If you accidentally overwrite the config, theme or system-inc directories, then you have your backup from Step 2, don't you. (Note, the 1.1 series of Bumblebee now ship with various add-on libraries in the system-inc directory to save you separately downloading them.
4. Delete the file config/config.php as it is no longer used by Bumblebee and will just confuse you later if you leave it in place.
5. Go to the upgrade wizard (using your browser). It is install/upgrade.php within your installation. It will check out your database format and advise you of any changes that you might like to make (see below for more information about this database change).
6. Go through the configuration file config/bumblebee.ini that came with the new version to see if there are any new goodies that you'd like to enable and make changes to your installations config/bumblebee.ini to enable these new features.
7. Log on to your upgraded installation and test it out.
8. Remember to delete the install directory from the installation once you're happy it's working as the the scripts within this directory can be used to find out your database login details.

Database changes moving to version 1.1

The database format for 1.1 is compatible with the format used by 1.0. If you are happily using the 1.0 installation then there is no need to change your database format. If, however, you would like to be able to use non-English (i.e. non-ASCII) characters within your database (for example for names of people or instruments), then you need to change your database format to accommodate this.

Notes

1. The conversion process can be done automatically or manually. If you choose to convert the database automatically using the upgrade wizard (install/upgrade.php) and you have (somehow) managed to insert non-ASCII data (i.e. characters other than those found on a standard US keyboard) into your database this operation will probably corrupt it. Since previous versions of Bumblebee couldn't insert non-ASCII characters into the database anyway, you would have had to work pretty hard for this to be a problem for you.
2. The automatic conversion process does not increase the size of the fields in the database. The field sizes are measured in bytes not characters, so if you are using characters from character sets that uses multiple bytes per character (e.g. non-European character sets) then you should manually increase the field size on each of the columns by a factor of 3 or 4. You can do this most easily using a database management tool such as phpMyAdmin.