Migrating from Cake 1.3 to 2.0 and beyond - migrate existing, or only use for new?

Question

I'm nearling completion of my first CakePHP-driven website and just saw they're already working on CakePHP 2.0 (not the stable release yet).

My questions:

• Is it incredibly time consuming to move to a new version of CakePHP (when it becomes the "stable" release that is)? I know they have migration guides, but - I've never used a framework before, so I've never had to migrate anything.

• Do you migrate your code for existing projects, or leave it as is and use the new stable version for future projects only?

• Where can I find what version of CakePHP I currently have installed? I've looked at the LICENCE and VERSION files, but cannot find the installed/current version listed in them.

These seem like simple questions, but I greatly appreciate any thoughts/advice - searching this on Google just brings up how-to-migrate pages, not pros/cons...etc.

Answer 1

I've migrated a few sites from CakePHP 1.2 to 1.3. In my experience, it takes 2-3 hours on sites that have 5-10 controllers and no custom plugins, etc. I find I typically only have to change the syntax on a handful of function calls, and when I figure out which ones, it is just a matter of doing a find / replace across the site. Of course it could be more of an issue going from 1.3 to 2.0, but I don't get the sense that it will be an especially drastic API change.

UPDATE: I'm now in the process of migrating to CakePHP 2.0 beta, and thought I should update this, as I'm finding the updates are more extensive and far-reaching than I had assumed when I wrote this. Migration guide here: https://github.com/cakephp/docs/blob/master/en/appendices/2-0-migration-guide.rst

ANOTHER UPDATE: Since people seem to be finding this useful, I just thought I'd point out that Cake now helpfully provides an upgrade shell that does some of the work for you. Note that although the documentation says it will do "most" of the work, I have found there are still quite a few function calls, etc. that will need to be updated manually (see migration guide). http://book2.cakephp.org/en/console-and-shells/upgrade-shell.html

As dhofstet said, it will all depend on the size and complexity of your site.

Whether you upgrade at all is usually a judgment call, but sometimes you have to (e.g. Cake 1.2 has some code that will break if your host upgrades to PHP 5.3). You certainly wouldn't have the kind of security issues that an old WordPress, Drupal, etc install would have. I have seen some noticeable speed increases with Cake upgrades, so depending on the situation it could be worth the trouble just for that (Cake 2.0 finally drops PHP 4 suppport). Look at the release notes and see if there are things that appeal to you in the new version.

To see your version, in the cake/VERSION.txt file, look at the very last line. It's easy to miss, but it should just be a number, e.g. 1.3.8.

Answer 2

1. This question is difficult to answer as it depends on the size and complexity of your project(s). The "big" releases (from 1.1 -> 1.2, 1.2 -> 1.3, 1.3 -> 2.0) usually break stuff and so you have to budget some migration work. The migration between "smaller" releases (for example from 1.3.9 to 1.3.10), on the other hand, is usually easy, often it just means to replace the cake folder. In both cases it is useful to have tests.
2. I migrate the projects which are actively maintained.
3. You can find the CakePHP version in cake/config/config.php