Update Limelight

New versions of Limelight with new features and bug fixes are regularly released. It’s important to keep your Limelight installation up-to-date. Follow these instructions to update your installation of Limelight.

Limelight releases use semantic versioning and are given version numbers such as 2.1.6. The 2 is considered the major version number. Limelight versioning is carefully controlled, so that all updates to a new release that use the same major version (e.g., 2.1.6 to 2.3.12) do not require any database updates. This kind of update is considered a minor version update. Updates that move to a new major version (e.g. 2.1.6 to 3.5.2) may require database updates. This kind of update is considered a major version update.

Minor version updates are relatively simple to perform. Major version updates are more complex–requiring extra steps such as backing up and updating the database.

Determine Latest Limelight Version

Visit the official Limelight Release Page to view the latest releases of Limelight. The most current release is listed at the top of the list of releases.

Determine Your Limelight Version

Follow these directions to determine your major version number.

Important

This guide assumes you have completed all the steps in the Installing Limelight tutorial.

1. Open a Terminal

On Linux and MacOS, open a normal terminal. On Windows, if you followed our instructions for installing Docker, follow the directions on our Docker Installation Tutorial to open a Linux terminal.

2. Get Version Number From docker-compose.yml

Type the following into your terminal. The first line takes you into the directory where you downloaded Limelight. The second command retrieves the version numbers.

cd ~/limelight
grep 'mriffle/limelight-webapp' docker-compose.yml

The output should be similar to:

image: mriffle/limelight-webapp:2

The 2 at the end of that line is your major version number.

Perform Appropriate Update

If the most recent release of Limelight has the same major version number as your local installation, perform a minor version update.

If the most recent release of Limelight has a newer major version number than your local installation, you may perform a minor or a major version update. A minor version update will ensure you are using the latest release of Limelight that has the same major version number as your installation (e.g., the latest 2.x.x version). A major version update will be more complicated to perform, but will ensure you have access to all the latest features and bug fixes in Limelight.

Follow the instructions below to perform a minor or major version update.