[wp-hackers] Upgrade instructions fatally flawed for Mac

[Elliotte Harold]

There is a major bug in the upgrade instructions on 
http://codex.wordpress.org/Upgrading_WordPress that can cause Mac users 
to lose their data. This needs to be corrected. The problem is here:

Step 3: Overwrite Files

Get the latest and greatest WordPress (http://wordpress.org/download) 
and upload it to the WordPress directory, overwriting all the files that 
exist there. This will preserve your images and themes.

Actually it won't, at least not on a Mac. I think what happens on 
Windows is that when you copy a folder such as wp-content onto an 
existing folder, files inside the target folder are retained if the new 
folder does not contain different versions of those files. However, on a 
Mac the behavior is different. The entire target folder is completely 
wiped out and replaced by the new folder. No content from the target 
folder is retained under any circumstance.

I would recommend making an upgrade distribution that does not include 
the wp-content folder to avoid the possibility of overwriting user files 
within this folder. User and system files should be more cleanly 
separated. An upgrade should not touch the user's files.

-- 
Elliotte Rusty Harold  elharo at metalab.unc.edu
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