Attention

TYPO3 v8 has reached its end-of-life March 31st, 2020 and is not maintained by the community anymore.

You can order Extended Long Term Support (ELTS) here: TYPO3 ELTS.

class.ext_update.php

While the update wizards already provide a skeleton and integration into TYPO3 CMS, there is a file from old times. This file is placed in the extension root and called class.ext_update.php. For better overview it's recommended to use the new update wizards with separate classes for each update.

If this file is found it will install a new menu item, "UPDATE", in the Extension Manager when looking at details for the extension. When this menu item is selected the class inside of this file (named ext_update) will be instantiated and the method main() will be called and expected to return HTML content.

Also the method access() has to be added. This method should return a boolean value whether or not the menu item should be shown. This feature is meant to disable the update tool if it has already been run and doesn't need to run again.