How to update your WordPress plugins from a local copy on Mac

SVN is a great tool, as it allows you to maintain different versions of your WordPress plugins and synchronize its development among multiple programmers.

This article shows the exact steps of how to update your plugin descriptions on WordPress plugins directory using a Mac with OS X. You don’t need to install anything.

Phase I – Checkout

First we must download the plugin from SVN to a local copy. This procedure is called checkout:

1. Create a directory called “svn” in your “Documents” directory.
2. Open up Terminal and go into that directory by entering:

   cd ~/Documents/svn
   

3. Perform the checkout using the svn command:

   svn co http://svn.wp-plugins.org/<strong>your-plugin-name</strong>
   

   You need to replace your-plugin-name, working example would be:

   svn co http://svn.wp-plugins.org/<strong>foliopress-wysiwyg</strong>
   

4. After executing this command, you will see a message like this one:

   Checked out revision 300313.

   That means the checkout went ok.

The plugin local copy is now downloaded into a directory called your-plugin-name in your Documents/svn folder.

Phase II – Update your files

5. Go into your plugin folder and edit the file “readme.txt” in a directory called “your-plugin-name/trunk“. That directory contains the version which appears on WordPress.org plugin listings. Use your favorite text editor.
6. If you are not sure about certain elements or formating look into Readme Standard on WordPress.com. You might need to if you want to do bigger updates.
7. Make your changes and use Readme Validator on WordPress.com to make sure it looks right.

Phase III – Commit

This brings your changes back online to WordPress.org.

8. Using your Terminal application into the plugin local copy directory:

   cd ~/Documents/svn/your-plugin-name

   Then execute the svn command.

   svn --username=UserName ci -m "readme.txt update"

   You will have to enter your own WordPress.org username instead of UserName. It’s the one you use to login at wordpress.org/extend/plugins

9. You should see a message like this one, so enter your password:

   Authentication realm: <http://svn.wp-plugins.org:80>
    WordPress.org Subversion
   Password for 'UserName':  

10. After you enter the password, the changed files will be transmitted to the SVN repository:

    Sending        trunk/readme.txt
    Transmitting file data .
    Committed revision 300314.

That’s it, the changes will appear on your plugin page (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/your-plugin-name) within few minutes.

Phase IV – Further updates

Each time some other developer from your team makes a change to the SVN repository, you will have to update your local copy in order to make further changes. That makes sure the versions are not mixed up and you work with the most up to date version.

11. Just execute the SVN update command from the local plugin copy folder (~/Documents/svn/your-plugin-name) each time you want to do additional update on that plugin:

    svn update

12. You will see a message like this, listing all the updated files:

    C   readme.txt
    Updated to revision 300321.

    After that, you are safe to do any new updates. You can skip steps 1 – 4 next time for this plugin, as long as you keep your local copy and you keep it updated.

More simple way how to deal with this is just to remove the plugin local copy after each update. That also makes sure you work with the most up to date version.

You can use the same steps to update any other of the plugin files.

More information:

Using Subversion article on WordPress.org

If you are using Windows, check out out the guide for updating WordPress plugins on Windows.

Martin Viceník

Martin graduated as an engineer in Computer Science from Slovak Technical University in Bratislava. He grew up in Liptovský Mikuláš in northern Slovakia next to the beautiful Tatra mountains. He is the developer behind our FV Player.