Foswiki update script
Posted on :: bash code foswiki

Although I have migrated my public site on zola which was on Foswiki, I have decided for now to keep my private familial wiki on Foswiki for now.

So I needed to upgrade it to 2.1.11, it was still in 2.1.6, and since the upgrade is not really obvious, I made a bash script to automatise the upgrade.

You can find it on GitHub.

This script supposes a modern version of Foswiki (v2+): it overwrites blindly the files that should not have been modified, so when customizing your wiki be sure to never directly modify distributed files.

The script however will not overwrite blindly any topic file that has been edited via Foswiki itself, by checking the author metadata. It will perform a 3-way merge, as automated as possible.

It also works only on a local copy of the site. You will have to download yourself a copy of your site, upgrade, and then re-upload it in place. This keeps the script simpler and safer.

It works on linux, but should work in linux-like layers on top of other OSes, such as cygwin, WSL, Homebrew, ...

Why staying on Foswiki?

My private wiki is used by me, but also my wife, who is not really fluent in wiki or markdown editing, so an excellent WYSIWYG is a must. And personnaly, I hate databases and strive for stability and simple architecture. Foswiki has all these qualities... and I would have a lot of content to convert.

But I will probably switch to an open source markdown-based wiki with a very good WYSIWYG editor and flat file storage, and easy to maintain. For now I see 3 potential candidates:

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