Magento 2: Upgrade/Update using Command Line & Composer

This article shows how you can upgrade/update your Magento 2 version through command line using composer.

Upgrading to Magento 2.3.x is a bit different than that of Magento 2.2.x or 2.1.x.

At first, I will show the commands that need to be run to upgrade Magento2 to version 2.1.x or 2.2.x.

Upgrading Magento to 2.2.x

In this example, I am upgrading Magento 2 to version 2.2.6.

Here are commands to run on terminal/command-prompt:

php bin/magento maintenance:enable
composer require magento/product-community-edition 2.2.6 --no-update
composer update
rm -rf var/di var/generation
php bin/magento cache:flush
php bin/magento setup:upgrade
php bin/magento setup:di:compile
php bin/magento indexer:reindex
php bin/magento maintenance:disable

Note: In Ubuntu/Debian Linux, if you are having permission issues then try using sudo at the beginning of every command. For example, sudo composer update

After you have upgraded Magento 2, you can check your Magento’s version with the following command:

php bin/magento --version

If you get cache write permission error when you browse your Magento site after upgrade, then run the following command to give write permission to pub and var directories:

chmod -R 777 pub var

Upgrading Magento to 2.3.x

The above commands work fine while upgrading Magento to 2.2.x.

To upgrade to Magento 2.3.x, you need to follow some more steps.

Here’s the step-by-step guide to upgrade Magento to 2.3.x:

Enable maintenance mode

php bin/magento maintenance:enable

Specify Magento packages

composer require magento/product-community-edition=2.3.0 --no-update

Specify additional packages

composer require --dev phpunit/phpunit:~6.2.0 friendsofphp/php-cs-fixer:~2.10.1 lusitanian/oauth:~0.8.10 pdepend/pdepend:2.5.2 sebastian/phpcpd:~3.0.0 squizlabs/php_codesniffer:3.2.2 --no-update

Remove unused packages

composer remove --dev sjparkinson/static-review fabpot/php-cs-fixer --no-update

Update autoload

Open composer.json and edit the "autoload": "psr-4" section to include "Zend\\Mvc\\Controller\\": "setup/src/Zend/Mvc/Controller/":

"autoload": {
    "psr-4": {
        "Magento\\Framework\\": "lib/internal/Magento/Framework/",
        "Magento\\Setup\\": "setup/src/Magento/Setup/",
        "Magento\\": "app/code/Magento/",
        "Zend\\Mvc\\Controller\\": "setup/src/Zend/Mvc/Controller/"
    },
    ...
}

Apply updates

composer update

Clean the Magento cache

php bin/magento cache:clean

Manually clear caches and generated content

Clear the var and generated subdirectories:

rm -rf <Magento install dir>/var/cache/*
rm -rf <Magento install dir>/var/page_cache/*
rm -rf <Magento install dir>/generated/code/*

If you use a cache storage other than the filesystem, such as Redis or Memcached, you must manually clear the cache there too.

Update the database schema and data

php bin/magento setup:upgrade

Disable maintenance mode

php bin/magento maintenance:disable

Finally, check your Magento version

php bin/magento --version

Read more: https://devdocs.magento.com/guides/v2.3/comp-mgr/cli/cli-upgrade.html

Hope this helps. Thanks.