Updating Docker-Foswiki to 2.1.7

Updating a docker instance is easy and fast.

timlegge/docker-foswiki has been updated to Foswiki 2.1.7. What you need to know to upgrade your instance.

Introduction

With the first release of Foswiki since I started maintaining timlegge/docker-foswiki I wondered how painful the upgrade would be. I had vague visions of Migrating Foswiki 1.1.9 on Ubuntu to Foswiki 2.1.6 on Docker which was certainly an undertaking.

No, it was much simpler than that but the nature of Docker images means its a little different.

Persistent Volumes

In order for a docker instance to host something like Foswiki it needs persistent volumes. That is a place to hold the changing content. In timelegge/docker-foswiki the provided docker compose files esentially put the entire Foswiki website on a persistent volume. The way Foswiki automatically inter-mingles some of the data and code (or more properly automatically generates content sections under data) makes it difficult to do anything else.

So, simply pulling the latest Docker image for timlegge/docker-foswiki means you get all the updated alpine linux packages but Foswiki remains at the same version.

Upgrading

The steps are pretty minor and are essentially the exact came that are documented at here.

1. Download the upgrade package
2. Copy it to your Docker Image's persistent volume
3. Unzip/tar over the existing Foswiki Installation
4. Save the updated LocalSite.cfg
5. Restart your Docker Container

Example Steps assuming your Docker Container can access the Internet

docker exec -it docker-foswiki /bin/bash
cd /var/www/foswiki
wget https://github.com/foswiki/distro/releases/download/FoswikiRelease02x01x07/Foswiki-upgrade-2.1.7.tgz 
tar --strip-components=1 -zxf Foswiki-upgrade-2.1.7.tgz 
cd tools
./configure --save
rm Foswiki-upgrade-2.1.7.tgz
exit

Then you simply need to restart your docker image to cache the updated Perl Code

Example Steps assuming your Docker Container cannot access the Internet

wget https://github.com/foswiki/distro/releases/download/FoswikiRelease02x01x07/Foswiki-upgrade-2.1.7.tgz
cp Foswiki-upgrade-2.1.7.tgz /var/lib/docker/volumes/foswiki_foswiki_www/_data
docker exec -it docker-foswiki /bin/bash
cd /var/www/foswiki
tar --strip-components=1 -zxf Foswiki-upgrade-2.1.7.tgz 
cd tools
./configure --save
rm Foswiki-upgrade-2.1.7.tgz
exit