The next Laravel release is 5.5 which arrives this July. Now let's say I make a policy where I'll upgrade my web app every year in July/August to the latest version.
During that year of running the web app what should I do to keep it up to date with security fixes and bug fixes?
For example let's say I deploy on version 5.5.2 and by December there's a 5.5.8 what's the best way to keep the minor changes stay up to date without jeopardising the web apps availability?
I asusume you would need something to run commands like composer update Every so often etc. But what would the exact commands be and can they be run using Laravels scheduled so it is cross platform - if so, how?
Thanks!
I will not run a composer update command as a cronjob. Packages can change and that can deprecate functions or change the way how they works: what will you do in this situation? Laravel itself has a great documentation (ex https://laravel.com/docs/5.4/upgrade) showing what will brake down of you upgrade from one version to another one.
The better approach is having a development branch where test the upgrade, fix pieces of code and then deploy everything online. Just in this way you will be comfortable not to have any surprise...