Holiday gift: Automatic Updates

As of today, the Automatic Updates contributed module for Drupal 7 and Drupal 8 has had its first stable release! This represents the completion of Phase 1 of the Automatic Updates Initiative, and the culmination of more than 18 months of work.

___________

Please note: this phase 1 work provides automatic update coverage for many scenarios, but not for every Drupal use case.

With this phase 1 release you can:

  • See Drupal PSAs that the security team determines are highly critical directly in your administrative interface.
  • Run readiness checks to determine if your site is eligible for automatic updates (is the filesystem writable, no custom edits to updated files, etc).
  • Automatically update Drupal 7 and Drupal 8 sites
    • Current limitations
      • Right now, can update only if the sites are not built or maintained with Composer 
      • Database updates are supported in Drupal 8, but not supported in Drupal 7 (if there are DB updates, an automatic update in D7 will be rolled back).
  • Update Drupal core (but not contributed projects)
  • Database updates should work in Drupal 8, but must be manually applied in Drupal 7

The Automatic Updates module will not be an official solution until the second phase is complete and the feature becomes part of Drupal Core. However, we believe that even as a contributed module Automatic Updates provides a significant improvement in maintenance and cost of ownership for a broad base of existing Drupal 7 and 8 sites, particularly those managed by small, independent site owners.

___________

The second phase of this initiative will focus on solving the remaining requirements and getting automatic updates ready for inclusion in Drupal core. The outstanding requirements include:

  • Support for Composer-built sites
  • Support for contributed modules and themes
  • Support for a more robust roll-back process
  • More robust support for database updates

We are currently seeking sponsors for the second phase of this initiative, so please reach out to us at the Drupal Association if you'd like to support this work!

Many thanks!

Thank you to these individuals:

And to these organizations:

https://www.drupal.org/drupalorg/blog/automatic-updates-phase-1-complete