We used to use symlinks to enable atomic operations, too. e.g. under /var/www/ we'd have /var/www/webapp_1.0, and have a symlink /var/www/webapp pointing to it. When there was a new version, upload it to /var/www/webapp_1.1, and then to bring it live, just update the symlink. Need to roll back? Switch the symlink back.
Wouldn't that cause problems when someone would find the old version and corrupt the data with it? Or would only the current version be accessible from the outside?
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We used to use symlinks to enable atomic operations, too. e.g. under /var/www/ we'd have /var/www/webapp_1.0, and have a symlink /var/www/webapp pointing to it. When there was a new version, upload it to /var/www/webapp_1.1, and then to bring it live, just update the symlink. Need to roll back? Switch the symlink back.
Wouldn't that cause problems when someone would find the old version and corrupt the data with it? Or would only the current version be accessible from the outside?
Your apache/whatever config would be pointed to the symlink location. No one would be able to get at the old versions of the site.
We'd use this approach not just for webapps, but versions of applications we'd build in house, bundles of scripts, whatever.
How would an external user find the old version?