I’ve done a major update to the update manager that is distributed with the Advanced Tools pack. I’ve also released it as an individual download as well that you can get and update your Advanced Tools install or just install individually if you want. However the side effect of this is that I’ve killed the old version. It was a hard decision because at one stage I was going to have a new file location and have the old software work going forwards as well as the new software working fine. I thought I’d force the update though to bring things forward. But its a big change.

First if you’re on the old version, you will get the following error message:

Parsing XML Document Failed: Not a JUpgrader definition file!

Complete with a shiny red font and the like as well. Once you’re at that point you aren’t going to be able to continue with the old tool. It has reached the end of its era. The tool itself is a slight modification of the 1.0 version that I wrote a few years ago – so I guess its fitting that it gets a bit of a rethink into a new 1.5 like version with features backported from 1.6’s tree. Part of this means that I’m really only supporting PHP5 or greater any more. I don’t have PHP4 handy for me to test any more and really, its getting beyond a joke now. Joomla! 1.6 will require PHP5.2+, however most of what I’m working on should work fine with PHP5+ without issues.

So what features do we have:

1. The ability to update the updater itself? Check!
2. The ability to switch between the 1.5 extractor, a backported 1.6 extractor and 1.5’s built-in PEAR Archive_Tar? Check!
3. The ability to manually upload files and use those instead of requiring an internet connection? Check!
4. The ability to specify a HTTP proxy to download updates through? Check!
5. Support for fopen and cURL for downloads? Check!
6. Support for working with FTP mode as well as without? Check!

I’ve got a beta release that if anyone is interested in testing ready to go, just download the “Joomla! Update Manager 1.5.1 Beta” by clicking the link (or copying it) and installing it into your own site. It’ll work for new installs or update existing installs.

Let me know if there are any issues as comments here. Once I’ve finalised this release, I’ll switch over the paths from update2.xml to update.xml and get everything squared away all nice and tight.