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Create fast updates for ftp

Several customers host their sites on shared hosts which do not allow ssh access or do not have git installed on their servers. When a fast core update is necessary it's often way faster when  I only upload the changed files with FTP rather then the whole core files (which can be really, really slow with drupal 8!). So here's my procedure:

  • I have a local git repository for each drupal core, where each update receives a new tag.
  • I download the official tar.gz because this is made for shared hosts - no composer and no official drupal git repo is involved.
  • I create my changed files depending on the versions the customer has installed and the latest download:

git diff --name-only d8.5.6 d8.5.3 | xargs tar -rf ../updates/update.tar.gz

Sometimes I need other tar options to get all changed files into the tar.gz:

git diff --name-only d8.5.6 d8.5.3 | xargs tar -zcf ../updates/update.tar.gz

My tags are d8.5.6 for drupal version 8.5.6 and d8.5.3 for drupal version 8.5.3 ...