While it's important to use the overrides system when customizing any file in JReviews so you don't lose your changes during updates. This doesn't mean you are off the hook from ever having to update the customized files.
Overview
The overrides system is incremental in nature, so you can override specific files instead of the entire theme. This approach is important for maintaining your site for two reasons:
- By looking at the JReviews overrides, anyone can quickly assess which files were modifed.
- Since overrides are in a different location from the source, when updating JReviews, and Add-ons, these files remain unchanged. In other words, you don't lose your work.
As with any software, there's no guarantee that changes you make will continue to work in future updates. If you change a file that received changes in the new version, your custom version of that file will be missing the updates, which can lead to errors, or missing functionality.
What Happens During Updates
The following information is most relevant if you have made any customizations to JReviews or Add-ons.
When JReviews and Add-ons are re-installed or updated, all previous source files are replaced.
What does this mean?
It means that if you change any source file directly, instead of using overrides, those files will be replaced, and any changes made will be lost.
So how to avoid losing customizations?
Always use overrides. Files placed in overrides remain untouched during updates, so your changes are safe.
However, the reason we release updates is to fix bugs and add new features.
So I never have to update the overrides?
That's not quite what this means. You are safe from losing your customizations when using overrides. However, any file you override will continue to load from the overrides folder, so if that specific file received an update to fix a bug or add a feature, your custom file doesn't have these changes.
You need to review the changes in files you customized when updates are released to determine if you need to update your customized files. Either adding the changes from the source, or re-doing your changes in a copy of the source file. We release a list of modified files when an update is released so you can check if the files you customized received an upadte. This is available in the changelogs.
To be able to compare new versions of files with your custom version, you can use specialized comparison software. Below are just a few options:
- WinMerge (open source)
- Beyond Compare (commercial)
- CompareMerge (commercial)
- Kaleidoscope (commercial)