DistributionWizard
Starting with XWiki 4.2, the Distribution Wizard (also known as DW) was introduced as an experimental feature which helps users migrate their XWiki instances to newer versions without having to manually import the XAR corresponding to their new version.
XWiki's Distribution Wizard comes as an aid to ease the migration and installation of the desired UI in your flavour. It works using XWiki's Extension Manager to automatically detect your XWIki version to search, resolve, download and install the UI corresponding to your version. It requires an internet conection in order to work.
DW on a Clean Install
After putting your XWiki WAR inside your Servlet Container (Tomcat, Jetty, etc) you start XWiki. When XWiki is first accessed, it will trigger the Distribution Wizard.
Greeting Page
Upon first access, you will be greeted by the Distribution Wizard, offering you the 3 possible options:
- Continue - when choosing this option, you will move to the next step of the Distribution Wizard
- Skip - DW will prompt you again after XWiki is restarted. This option is available from all the steps within DW.
- Cancel - Cancels the DW and you will have to manually import the XAR. This option is available from all the steps within DW.
User Interface
The first step will check your XWiki version and will propose a version of the UI which is suited for your version.
- Click on Install to install the proposed UI. This will resolve the extensions that are going to be installed.
- Click on the Continue button. This will start the actual installation of the previously resolved extensions.
- You will be prompted to insert credentials for the Administrator, which are Admin/admin.
- After the instalation is complete, you can click on the Continue button to proceed to the next step.
- Since this is a clean install, steps 2 and 3 are skipped.
DW in Upgrade Mode
Distribution Wizard also allows you to perform an upgrade without having to manually import the XAR file.
User Interface
- Click on Install to install the proposed UI. This will resolve the extensions that are going to be installed.
- The Distribution Wizard detects that the UI version is not the latest and proposes to upgrade. Click on the Upgrade button.
- After resolving the required dependencies, click Continue button to begin the actual instalation of the new UI
- During the instalation you might get merge conflicts. Althrough XWiki does automatically a 3 way merge, sometimes the merge might fail. Solve your conflict and click on Continue
- If you have several subwikis you can migrate them all from one click, without having to do so manually
