Resources

Upgrading Acquia Dev Desktop

Important

End of Support notice! Acquia has stopped support for Dev Desktop on June 30, 2021. Acquia recommends that you transition to Acquia Cloud IDE for a managed development environment on Cloud Platform. For more information, see Migrating from Dev Desktop to Cloud IDE.

Acquia also provides limited integration with open source alternatives to Cloud IDE for local development. For more information, see Local development solutions.

The information on this page will help you upgrade your installed version of Acquia Dev Desktop. You can find instructions on upgrading your version 2 installation, upgrading from version 1 to version 2, or restoring a previous version if needed.

Upgrading Acquia Dev Desktop 2

When you start Acquia Dev Desktop 2, it checks whether an updated version is available. Click Yes to download the new version.

You can check whether an updated version of Acquia Dev Desktop 2 is available, and upgrade to the new version from within the application. In the menu, select Acquia Dev Desktop > Check for Update.

Upgrading your installed version of Acquia Dev Desktop 2 is not required each time a new version of Drupal is released. Each time you create a new application with Acquia Dev Desktop, you download and install the latest version of the Drupal distribution you choose. For more information, see Starting from scratch.

Upgrading from Acquia Dev Desktop version 1

If you use Acquia Dev Desktop 1 and want to upgrade to Acquia Dev Desktop 2:

  1. Install Acquia Dev Desktop 2, following the procedure described in Installing Acquia Dev Desktop. Be sure to install Acquia Dev Desktop 2 in a different directory from your existing Acquia Dev Desktop 1 installation directory.

  2. Start Acquia Dev Desktop 1 and export any websites you want to use with Acquia Dev Desktop 2. To do this, in the Acquia Dev Desktop 1 Control Panel, click Settings > Sites > Export.

  3. Import the websites you exported from Acquia Dev Desktop 1, following the procedure described in Starting with an existing local website.

Restoring a previous installation

The upgrade process preserves all application databases and configuration data, including paths and ports numbers. Your previous installation is backed up in the C:\Users\[username]\.acquia\backup (Windows) or ~/.acquia/backup (Mac OS) directory. If you want to restore an earlier version of Acquia Dev Desktop 2, copy the files from the backup directory over the files in your newest installation.

Note

On macOS, the /.acquia directory is hidden. To locate the directory:

  1. Open Finder.

  2. In the menu bar, select Go > Go to folder.

  3. Enter the path of the directory and click Go.

Help

Ask a question

Common questions

If you can't find what you're looking for, then you can reach out to our Support team for further assistance.