Pre-built farmOS releases
Important: It is highly recommended that you use Docker and/or Composer for hosting farmOS. Together they encapsulate all the web server requirements and ensure that all dependencies are compatible with one another. This is especially important if you want to install additional add-on modules provided by the community.
If you do not have access to these tools in your hosting environment (eg: in shared hosting contexts), your options for hosting farmOS will be more limited, and installing add-on modules may not be possible (or will require more understanding of the requirements and considerations for maintaining them and their dependencies).
In an effort to make farmOS available in these contexts, pre-built "packaged" releases are provided for download. These are simply tarballs that contain a farmOS codebase that can be unpacked in a web server's webroot directory. They are automatically built by the official farmOS build process, using Docker and Composer, and are identical to the code included in the official farmOS Docker images.
Please be aware of the following limitations:
- Pre-built "packaged" released only include a default "stock" farmOS codebase.
- You are responsible for all server requirements.
- Installing community add-on modules is more difficult (see Build your own for a suggested approach).
- No support is provided by the farmOS maintainers.
Overview
An alternative to the Docker-based deployment is to install the farmOS codebase directly on the host server using a packaged release tarball, available from GitHub: github.com/farmOS/farmOS/releases
Packaged releases include everything from the /opt/drupal directory in the
Docker image. This represents the entire farmOS codebase, pre-built with
Composer.
Download and unpack the tarball on your web server, and point the document root
at the web subdirectory.
Once the farmOS codebase is in place on your web server, continue with the farmOS installation steps.
Updating
Important: Read and understand the Updating farmOS documentation first. Updating the farmOS code is only one part of the overall update process.
When a new version of farmOS is released, you can update to it by downloading
the new release tarball and unpacking it in place of the old codebase, replacing
everything except the web/sites directory. Be sure to replace (not merge)
all files and directories.
Do not overwrite the web/sites directory, because it contains all your
site-specific settings and uploaded files.
Build your own
If you want to install community add-on modules, but can't run Docker or Composer in your hosting environment, one approach is to build your own farmOS codebase locally with Composer and create your own tarball. This mimics the way the official pre-built "packaged" releases are created, but gives you more control over defining your own dependencies. For more information, see Building farmOS with Composer.