What Tridion Hotfixes have been applied?

Question

What's the most reliable method of ascertaining what Tridion Hotfixes have been applied to a system (other than proper previous release documentation)?

Specifically I'd like to know for SDL Tridion 2009 but would also be interested in knowing if it's different for SDL Tridion 2011.

Answer 1

The most reliable method is keeping track of which hotfixes you installed manually. For example by putting every hotfix zip in a directory on the server and working from there.

The more likely one to work on every system (and not just one your setting up today) depends on a combination of file versions, manifest files (in jars), file sizes and file timestamps. Those are in descending order of preferability.

Answer 2

In the CM web interface, if click on the SDL Tridion logo in the upper right, you’ll get a pop-up that has general version information. If you click on ‘details’ (and wait a few seconds), you’ll get a list of all CM files with versions and timestamps, which you can use to compare against hotfixes and determine if they are installed or not. This works in all recent versions of Tridion (5.x and up).

CD, you’ll need to go look at the files directly, but there are generally far fewer files to check on the CD side.

Answer 3

You could use the following community extension to manage your hot fixes. https://www.sdltridionworld.com/community/2011_extensions/HotfixManager.aspx

This will not help finding the hot fixes already applied. This is pretty much inline with Puf and Nuno comments. When you instal your hot fixes you have to install using the extension, so it will maintain track of the fixes. We have used this in Dev/QA and testing it out, but have not used in production yet (planning to use it).