I recently discovered how easy it is to install and subsequently update Joomla using SVN Checkouts through shell access.
You need shell access and your server must run an SVN client. Simply log into your shell account, navigate to the appropriate folder and make a new directory for the installation:
$ cd public_html
$ mkdir newsite
Go into your new directory:Checkout the latest release--in this case 1.5.3 (you will need the space and period after the url)svn co http://joomlacode.org/svn/joomla/development/tags/1.5.3/ .
Then set up your MySQL database as usual and run the browser installer.
This method installs an .svn directory that keeps track of the versions of each file.
To upgrade to a new version go to your newsite directory via shell and enter:svn sw http://joomlacode.org/svn/joomla/development/tags/1.5.4/
This will grab any updated files from the SVN repository and overwrite the old versions leaving the rest of the files intact.
I have found this a tremendous timesaver over the download/upload/unpack and especially the download/unpack/upload procedures.
Anyone else doing this?
Steve