From source

Upgrade an installation built from source

  1. Before you upgrade
  2. 1. Get the new release
  3. 2. Rebuild
  4. 3. Restart
  5. 4. Check the upgrade
  6. Roll back

An installation built from source is upgraded by checking out the new release, rebuilding it and restarting the application. Your settings, forms, playbooks, certificates and logs are stored in server/persistent, which Git and the build do not modify.

Before you upgrade

Prepare the upgrade so that you can go back if something goes wrong:

  • Take a backup under Settings → Backups. The new release upgrades the database schema at its first start.
  • Read the changelog for the releases between your version and the new one.
  • Moving to a new major version? Follow Upgrading to v7 first.
  • Check the Node.js version the new release requires, in the changelog.

1. Get the new release

Fetch the release tags and check out the release you want. Release tags carry the version number, such as 7.2.0; the main branch can hold changes that are not released yet:

cd /srv/apps/ansibleforms
git fetch --tags
git checkout 7.2.0

2. Rebuild

Rebuild in the same three steps as at installation. First rebuild the client:

cd client
npm ci
npm run build

Then update the server’s dependencies:

cd ../server
npm ci --omit=dev

Finally copy the rebuilt client into the server’s views folder again:

rm -rf views
mkdir views
cp -r ../client/dist/. views/

Compare server/.env.example with your persistent/.env to pick up any settings that the release adds.

3. Restart

Restart the application to load the new code. The database schema is upgraded at the first start:

pm2 restart ansibleforms

If you run the application without PM2, stop npm run start and start it again.

4. Check the upgrade

Follow the application log while it starts:

pm2 logs ansibleforms

In AnsibleForms, Help → About shows the version that is running, and Settings → Status shows the health of the database, the schema and the other systems AnsibleForms depends on.

Roll back

To go back to the previous release, check out its tag, for example git checkout 7.1.6, then rebuild and restart as in steps 2 and 3. If that release does not start on the upgraded database, restore the backup you took under Settings → Backups.


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