Upgrading Zend Framework - Steps & Guidance

Question

The site I maintain is currently using Zend Framework 1.8.0, which is over 2 years old. I'd like to upgrade to 1.11.11 and am having some trouble finding basic guidelines for how to pull this off smoothly. Is it as simple as overwriting the library/Zend folder with the latest files?

Here are my steps I plan on taking. Am I missing anything?

1. Download latest Zend Framework code.
2. SSH into the server and copy library/Zend to /path/to/webapp/library and call the folder something like Zend-1.11.
3. Put up "Site is down for maintenance page" on our site.
4. cd /path/to/webapp and then make a backup copy of current Zend version, e.g. cp -R Zend Zend-old
5. mv Zend-1.11 Zend
6. Remove "Site is down for maintenance page"

At this point, the /library/Zend folder would have the latest Zend Framework code and I'd have "Zend-old" to switch back to in case anything goes wrong.

Is this the typical way to upgrade?

Answer 1

Things to do before updating Zend Framework:

1. Read the change log from your current version to the latest version that you are downloading.
2. While doing so, make sure all your current code will work without any bugs, even minor. Usually all updates are backward compatible. (But sometimes, if there are any major changes around a particular module, you will have a little rework in your code)
3. If the new version of ZF has a new feature that you can use for your site, modify your site to use it.
4. Update the framework in your development environment first (by pointing your lib path to the new framework files) and then make sure all parts of your site works the same and all your tests are passing.
5. Then update your production site with the new version using the same way mentioned in the question.