One of the primary ways of keeping a Drupal site of any size running securely and at peak performance is to ensure that all of its modules stay updated. With thousands of modules in the Drupal eco-system, updates are released literally every day. Luckily, Drupal core's Update Status module helps site administrators keep notified of modules in need of updating.

As source code repositories became more accessible (friendly), more and more developers realized their benefits and started using them. While Drupal.org currently uses CVS, one of the most widely used source code repository systems in the Drupal community (for now) is svn. This article isn't going to talk about how to implement svn, as there are many resources available.

Assuming you haven't been living under a rock for the past year or so, you're probably aware that the Drupal community has embraced Drush, a command-line interface for interacting with your Drupal web site. Drush allows you to quickly perform tasks that you'd normally have to wade through Drupal's user inteface to accomplish (clearing caches, downloading modules, etc...) The real power of Drush comes into play when you start creating command line scripts that combine multiple Drush commands.

• backup your database (I still like to use the Backup and Migrate module for this, although it is possible using Drush)
• remove the module to be upgraded using svn
• commit the change to svn
• use drush to download the new version of the module
• add the module to svn
• commit the change to svn
• run update.php

$ svn del devel
D     devel/ui.mouse.js
D     devel/devel_node_access.info
... lots of files in here ...
D     devel/README.txt
D     devel
$ svn commit -m 'removing old devel module'
Deleting       modules/devel
Committed revision 147.
$ drush dl devel
Project devel (6.x-1.21) downloaded to /sites/demo/sites/all/modules/devel.   [success]
$ svn add devel
A         devel
A         devel/devel-rtl.css
A         devel/devel.css
A         devel/devel.info
... lots of files in here ...
A         devel/ui.draggable.js
A         devel/ui.mouse.js
$ svn commit -m 'adding updated devel module'
Adding         modules/devel
Adding         modules/devel/LICENSE.txt
Adding         modules/devel/README.txt
... lots of files in here ...
Adding         modules/devel/ui.draggable.js
Adding         modules/devel/ui.mouse.js
Transmitting file data .....................................
Committed revision 148.
$ drush updatedb
The following updates are pending:

 devel module                                                        

 6003 - As per issue #813132: change schablon.com to white for krumo.

Do you wish to run all pending updates? (y/n): y
Executing devel_update_6003                              [success]
'all' cache was cleared                                  [success]
Finished performing updates.                             [ok]
$ 

• backup your database
• use drush to download the new version of the module, commit the changes to svn, and perform the database update all in a single step!

$ drush pm-update --svnsync --svncommit transliteration
Refreshing update status information ...
Done.
Update information last refreshed: Wed, 08/11/2010 - 12:44

Update status information on all installed and enabled Drupal projects:
 Name                         Installed version          Proposed version           Status                          
 AddThis Button               6.x-2.9                    6.x-2.9                    Up to date                      
 Advanced help                6.x-1.2                    6.x-1.2                    Up to date                      
 Automatic Nodetitles         6.x-1.2                    6.x-1.2                    Up to date                      
 Backup and Migrate           6.x-2.2                    6.x-2.2                    Up to date                      
 Better Formats               6.x-1.2                    6.x-1.2                    Up to date                      
 Acquia Drupal                1.2.25 (Drupal 6.17 core)  1.2.26 (Drupal 6.17 core)  SECURITY UPDATE available       
 CCK Private Fields           6.x-1.1                    6.x-1.1                    Up to date                      
 CCK Redirection              6.x-1.2                    6.x-1.2                    Up to date                      
 Content Profile              6.x-1.0                    6.x-1.0                    Up to date                      
 Chaos tool suite             6.x-1.6                    6.x-1.7                    Update available                
 Deployment                   6.x-1.x-dev                6.x-1.x-dev                Update available                
 Devel                        6.x-1.21                   6.x-1.21                   Up to date                      
 Domain Access                6.x-2.5                    6.x-2.5                    Up to date                      
 Embedded Media Field         6.x-1.20                   6.x-1.24                   Update available                
 Environment Indicator        6.x-1.0                    6.x-1.0                    Up to date                      
 Flag                         6.x-1.3                    6.x-1.3                    Up to date                      
 Flag Friend                  6.x-1.0-rc4                6.x-1.0                    Update available                
 getID3()                     6.x-1.3                    6.x-1.4                    Update available                
 Global Redirect              6.x-1.2                    6.x-1.2                    Up to date                      
 Hierarchical Select          6.x-3.1                    6.x-3.3                    SECURITY UPDATE available       
 Image Resize Filter          6.x-1.9                    6.x-1.9                    Up to date                      
 IMCE                         6.x-2.0-beta3              6.x-2.0-rc1                Update available                
 IMCE Wysiwyg bridge          6.x-1.1                    6.x-1.1                    Up to date                      
 Invite                       6.x-2.0-alpha1             6.x-2.0-beta2              Update available                
 Migrate                      6.x-1.0                    6.x-1.0                    Up to date                      
 Migrate Extras               6.x-1.0-beta1              6.x-1.0-beta1              Up to date                      
 Nodequeue                    6.x-2.9                    6.x-2.9                    Up to date                      
 Organic groups               6.x-2.1                    6.x-2.1                    Up to date                      
 Panels                       6.x-3.5                    6.x-3.7                    Update available                
 Path redirect                6.x-1.0-beta6              6.x-1.0-beta7              Update available                
 Quick Tabs                   6.x-2.0-rc4                6.x-2.0-rc4                Up to date                      
 Radioactivity                6.x-1.3-rc1                6.x-1.3                    Update available                
 Scheduler                    6.x-1.7                    6.x-1.7                    Up to date                      
 Schema                       6.x-1.7                    6.x-1.7                    Up to date                      
 Skinr                        6.x-1.5                    6.x-1.5                    Up to date                      
 Taxonomy Image               6.x-1.6                    6.x-1.6                    Up to date                      
 Transliteration              6.x-2.1                    6.x-3.0                    Installed version not supported 
 Table Wizard                 6.x-1.2                    6.x-1.3                    Update available                
 Views Bulk Operations (VBO)  6.x-1.9                    6.x-1.9                    Up to date                      
 Views cycle                  6.x-1.0-beta4              6.x-1.0                    Update available                
 Wysiwyg                      6.x-2.1                    6.x-2.1                    Up to date                      
 Copywrite                    6.x-1.0                    6.x-1.1                    Update available                
 Fusion                       6.x-1.0-rc1                6.x-1.0                    Update available                

Code updates will be made to the following projects:
Transliteration [transliteration-6.x-3.0]

Note: Updated projects can potentially break your site. It is NOT recommended to update production sites without prior testing.
Note: A backup of your package will be stored to backups directory if it is not managed by a supported version control system.
Note: If you have made any modifications to any file that belongs to one of these projects, you will have to migrate those modifications after updating.
Do you really want to continue? (y/n): y
Project transliteration was updated successfully. Installed version is now 6.x-3.0.
Project committed to Subversion successfully                                                                                      [ok]
'all' cache was cleared                                                                                                           [success]
No database updates required                                                                                                      [success]
'all' cache was cleared                                                                                                           [success]
Finished performing updates.                                                                                                      [ok]
$ 

One the update information is refreshed, the updates can begin. Let's look at the command in detail:

• pm-update is the function that will actually download, install, and perform the database updates for any modules that are out-of-date ("pm" stands for "package manager")
• --svnsync tells drush to add/delete any new or obsolete files in the module from the SVN repository
• --svncommit tells drush to commit the changes to the site's SVN repository
• transliteration is the name of the module to be updated. If you run the command without a module name, it will attempt to update all modules that are out-of-date.

A-ha! Gotcha!

• admin.itpl.php
• customer.itpl.php

• uc_order-admin.tpl.php
• uc_order-customer.tpl.php
• uc_order.tpl.php

Conclusion

Ryan Price and Mike Anello recently talked with Jacob Redding (jredding), author of Beginning Drupal as well Treasurer and Interim General Manager of the Drupal Association.

Beginning Drupal, released earlier this year by Wiley Publishing, covers a large selection of Drupal topics. Jacob mentions that he wrote the book to be a reference for someone who is not only building a Drupal site, but who also wants to really understand how Drupal works.

The book was written for Drupal 7 - many of the topics in the book cover the changes between Drupal 6 and Drupal 7 including (but definitely not limited to): user vs. profile fields, public and private fields, content type block visibility, and localization.

Jacob, Ryan, and Mike discuss specific portions of the book and the style in which it is written. Jacob has been a professional Drupal trainer for several years, and has tried to leverage what he has learned about teaching Drupal when writing this book. As an added bonus, the subject of zoot suits was brought up as well.

Wiley Publishing has given us a couple of copies of the book to giveaway - simply leave a comment below (be sure to leave your twitter or drupal.org username so we have some way to contact you) and we'll pick two winners at random.

Want more information about Jacob? Check him out at @jredding on Twitter or on his blog at jredding.info.

UPDATE - comments and content registration is closed. Winners will be announced on DrupalEasy Podcast 42.

Listen in a Andrew, Ryan, and Mike discuss Drupal news from the past week. In this week's episode, Ryan talks about his trip to Design4Drupal, we all wonder why anyone would be against a code of conduct, and we plan out exactly how to get Drupal 7 released.

5+ Stories

• Contributors to Drupal.org CVS since 2000
• New Drupal modules contributed by Digg.com
• Adopt a Drupal Code of Conduct
• Boston Drupal Design Camp
• Drupal 7 release date
• Haitian Creole translation effort

Thanks to Webenabled for sponsoring this week's podcast. Create, develop, and deploy Drupal applications entirely on the Webenabled platform.

Picks of the Week - every podcast we each pick a module, theme, or other Drupal-related "thing" that we'd like to spread the word about.

• Mike - Semantic CCK by Ryan James and Rene Hache (rjay and rhache) - allows you to specify the HTML output of your CCK fields and labels.
• Andrew - ImageCache Actions by Dan Morrison (dman) - Imagecache.module provides the most commonly-used processes needed for basic image manipulation.
• Ryan - Omega theme and Omega Tools by Jake Strawn (himerus)- base theme based on the 960gs with an accompanying helper module - screencast: http://himerus.com/blog/himerus/omega-theme-drupal-7-demo

Site of the Week - every podcast we collectively pick a (usually new) Drupal site to be highlighted and discussed. This week's pick is Dahon Folding Bicycles - http://dahon.com/ - recently featured in a Drupal.org case study http://drupal.org/Dahon-Folding-Bicycles

If you'd like your site highlighted, please submit it here: http://DrupalEasy.com/siteoftheweek

Follow us on twitter:

• @drupaleasy
• @andrewmriley
• @liberatr
• @ultimike

If you'd like to leave us a voicemail, call 321-441-3964. Please keep in mind that we might play your voicemail during one of our future podcasts. Feel free to call in with suggestions, rants, questions, or medicinal advice for Andrew. If you'd rather just send us an email, please use our contact page at http://DrupalEasy.com/contact

The Drupal Association is trying to figure out the best way it can help DrupalCamp organizers. To that end, we've create a quick survey for DrupalCamp organizers to help the association determine how DrupalCamps are currently organized and managed.

The survey is divided into three sections: general information, finances/legal, and miscelleanous. The "general information" section has four questions about the date, location, and size of the camp. The "finances and legal" section has four questions about the size of the budget, registration fees, and legal organization of the camp. The survey concludes with a four-question "miscelleanous" section that asks about camp purchases (including event insurance), volunteers, and a text area for additional comments.

Only one organizer from each camp needs to complete the survey (we'll take care of any duplicates). So far we've collected about 30 responses, and we'd like to ensure that representatives from all DrupalCamps have a chance to respond.

The association will use the survey responses to determine how they can best support local DrupalCamps. If you're a DrupalCamp organizer, please complete the survey!