Better update routine?

Git is a bad idea for this; use Composer.

But how would I do that? I seem to be changin' a lot of lib files and what have you that is dropped all over the place into application folder, lib folder, third party folder etc.. How do I make sure I can update CI wihout overriding the changes I've made to any file. I thought Composer was just simply a package manager ... !?

I don't quite get what the problem is ...

Are you modifying framework files? You should never do that.

Anything you do under application/, third_party/, etc. is your own business. system/ is the only dir you need to change during an update.

But that's exactly my point. In application you have all the config, routing etc. that you usually modify. You add modules and stuff to that application folder, and then when any of those (config files, libraries etc) gets updated you manually have to copy/paste lines of code from your modified files back into the updated ones.

I know that you shouldn't touch the system folder for that same reason, BUT the reality is, that the same actually goes for the larger part of the application folder ... and that's to be honest a little misleading. Now image, that the »system« somehow checked for - let's say - a config.php file in some directory, let's call it user_app, for the lack of creativity. The system could then somehow merge that config with its own ... and when stuff gets updated, you simply dump a clean application folder into the root leaving your user_app (which is TOTALLY your own code) untouched.

Am I really the only person who think it's weird that system shouldn't be touched but changing stuff in application is ok. To me they look much the same in the sense that they contain stuff that potentially gets updated by the CodeIgniter team ...