Multiple Applications, One Cake (or more)

With running multiple CakePHP applications, keeping them all up to date with the latest security fixes can be an issue. Instead of having to update each one individually, having a shared cake installation can be beneficial.

While there are many different methods of doing this, I couldn't get any of the ones I tried to work. So I deconstructed the process and made it VERY simple and functional. Obviously since we are using symlinks this is applicable only on Linux.

Step 1: Extract CakePHP to where you want your application to reside. e.g. /var/www/html/myApp/
Step 2: Extract CakePHP to where you want your Cake to reside. For ease in updating, I named mine the same as the version number. e.g. /var/www/cakephp-1.3.11
Step 3: While unnecessary, I found it convenient to create a symlink to the cake directory named 'cake', otherwise you have to either name your cake folder the same every update, or update all your application symlinks

$ ln -s /var/www/cakephp-1.3.11 /var/www/cake

Step 4: Delete the cake directory in your application.

$ rm -fr /var/www/html/myApp/cake

Step 5: Create a symlink in the application folder to the shared cake folder.

$ ln -s /var/www/cake/cake /var/www/html/myApp/cake

Now any application that has that symlink in it instead of the cake folder will use the shared folder. Update the shared folder once, all applications that are sharing it get updated.
Step 1: Extract new version of cake to same directory as old version of cake. e.g. /var/www/cakephp-1.3.12
Step 2: Update your shared simple symlink to the new directory

$ ln -f -s /var/www/cakephp-1.3.12 /var/www/cake

That easy.

If you want to have an application use an older version of Cake, just install it in the application itself as normal, OR install it next to the other version and change the symlink in the app folder to match the different version of cake.
Step 1: Extract different version of cake for sharing. e.g. /var/www/cakephp-2.0.0-RC2
Step 2: Update your application's symlink to the new directory

$ ln -f -s /var/www/cakephp-2.0.0-RC2/cake /var/www/html/my2.0App/cake