Difference After Upgradation in Magento2

Question

I have one website in Magento 2.2.1, Now We are planned and Upgrade Website in 2 instances one from Composer and Another from Manually Way(Downloaded form Magento Website).

Now we are on the point where we found many differences while comparing Vendor Folder of Both Instance after Upgrade.

My Findings Like -

• 23 New Directories added in Manually Upgrade while Composer instance does not have.
• Many Files have difference while compare
• Manual Upgrade have Many modules from vendor have Upgraded versions while composer does not have.

Why there are difference in Composer Update and Manual Upgrade?

Which one is better for Upgrade ?

Can anyone Help me on this?

Answer 1

Why there are difference in Composer Update and Manual Upgrade?

There are many reasons for those difference in Composer Update and Manual Upgrade. One of them is that you maybe have an incorrect config.

Which one is better for Upgrade?

To upgrade to the latest version of Magento, the best way to do it is Manually Way (Downloaded form Magento Website). You need to set up a new Magento version and copy the entire informations from your old version to the new one - You can do it manually or export to CSV file then import into your new website.

In reverse, here is the guide for you if you choose a composer update: https://devdocs.magento.com/guides/v2.3/cloud/project/project-upgrade.html. However, you may find many differences in database structure, in code while all of these things are definitely not encountered when you update website manually way.