Migrating between versions of Drupal is hard. There's no two ways about it. To upgrade from D5.1, we have to go to D5.20, then D6.14 and eventually to D7. That's a lot of download, unpack, copy, paste, update.php, etc. But there are things we can do to make our lives easier.

Enter drush.

After using drush for about 10 minutes, we're not sure how we ever lived without it.

To wit:*

drush updatecode --svnsync

From drush help:

"updatecode  Display available update information and allow updating of all installed project code to the specified version (or latest by default). Note: The user is asked to confirm before the actual update. Use the --yes option to answer yes automatically."

"--svnsync  Automatically add new files to the SVN repository and remove deleted files."

If you're feeling gutsy, you can run "drush update", which will even apply your database updates (update.php).

With the time you save, you can justify eavesdropping on South St passers by.

(* -- always back up your database and source code before you run any updates.)