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I administer a few servers, on some of which are a lot of users which happily deploy mediawikis and oder php-applications. This gives me headaches since there are often old versions of them lying around.

Is there something like an automatic upgrader for php-applications and other web-apps? I know some of them are in the repositories (I use debian and ubuntu), but those are often too old versions to be used.

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Create your own Debian package files from the source. If you're feeling really kind, kick them upstream to the unstable distributions. I suggest grabbing the source package that already exists, replacing it with the current source, and updating the package definitions as fit (necessary versions, packager id, etc).

This allows you to build it once, install it wherever, and use the system's packaging tools to keep it up to date. You can establish your own repository that is entered into /etc/apt/sources.list or you can push the files through custom scripts or a management tool like Puppet.

Then you just have to convince your users to not install things that aren't packaged...

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  • The problem is that i (and i guess thousands of other admin) don't have time to look for every new patch of all the php-software that is installed. Why did nobody yet manage to write a php repo-system?
    – Fabian Zeindl
    Apr 11, 2012 at 10:49
  • @FabianZeindl Well, that system does exist in the distributions. The catch for you is that most distributions push everything in stages, so unless it's a security update you're left with the old version. You'd need to find the time, the need, the desire to make it public, and a system that either results in you doing everything or presents enough trust in submitted archives.
    – Jeff Ferland
    Apr 11, 2012 at 13:54

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