coffee.geek.nz

in the category of things you might not know, but really should because it'll change the way you build stuff in drupal...

DRUSH.

Drush is this thing for your shell. I installed it from deb.
once installed i can cd into a drupal doc root and type:
drush up

and, like magic, all my modules, themes, and core gets updated to the latest official release. No need to give out file write permission to apache or any other nasties like you see in other projects.

There's a bunch more commands other than "up" - the other one i use most often is:
drush dl [module name]

e.g.
drush dl views

and now i have the latest official release of the views module in my drupal sites/all/modules

Commands: 
 cache-clear (cc)      Clear a specific cache, or all drupal caches.                                                                                                                            
 core-cli (cli)        Enter a new shell optimized for drush use.                                                                                                                               
 core-cron (cron)      Run all cron hooks.                                                                                                                                                      
 core-rsync (rsync)    Rsync the Drupal tree to/from another server using ssh.  Relative paths start from the Drupal root folder if a site alias is used; otherwise they start from the current 
                       working directory.                                                                                                                                                       
 core-status (status,  Provides a birds-eye view of the current Drupal installation, if any.                                                                                                    
 st)                                                                                                                                                                                            
 drupal-directory      Return path to a given module/theme directory. See --help for more details.                                                                                              
 (dd)                                                                                                                                                                                           
 help                  Print this help message. Use --filter to limit command list to one command file (e.g. --filter=pm)                                                                       
 php-eval              Evaluate arbitrary php code after bootstrapping Drupal.                                                                                                                  
 php-script (scr)      Run php script(s).                                                                                                                                                       
 pm-disable (dis)      Disable one or more modules or themes.                                                                                                                                   
 pm-download (dl)      Download core Drupal and projects like CCK, Zen, etc.                                                                                                                    
 pm-enable (en)        Enable one or more modules or themes.                                                                                                                                    
 pm-info               Show info for one or more projects.                                                                                                                                      
 pm-list (sm)          Show a list of available modules and themes                                                                                                                              
 pm-refresh (rf)       Refresh update status information                                                                                                                                        
 pm-releases           Release information for a project                                                                                                                                        
 pm-uninstall          Uninstall one or more modules.                                                                                                                                           
 pm-update (up)        Update your project code and apply any database updates required (update.php)                                                                                            
 pm-updatecode (upc)   Update your project code                                                                                                                                                 
 search-index          Index the remaining search items without wiping the index.                                                                                                               
 search-reindex        Force the search index to be rebuilt.                                                                                                                                    
 search-status         Show how many items remain to be indexed out of the total.                                                                                                               
 site-alias (sa)       Print site alias records for all known site aliases and local sites.                                                                                                     
 site-install (si)     Install Drupal along with modules/themes/configuration using the specified install profile.                                                                              
 site-upgrade (sup)    Run a major version upgrade for Drupal core and contrib modules.                                                                                                         
 sql-cli (sqlc)        Open a SQL command-line interface using Drupal's credentials.                                                                                                            
 sql-conf              Print database connection details using print_r().                                                                                                                       
 sql-connect           A string for connecting to the DB.                                                                                                                                       
 sql-dump              Exports the Drupal DB as SQL using mysqldump.                                                                                                                            
 sql-query (sqlq)      Execute a query against the site database.                                                                                                                               
 sql-sync              Copy source database to target database using rsync.                                                                                                                     
 test-clean            Delete leftover tables and files from prior test runs.                                                                                                                   
 test-drush            Run drush-specific tests                                                                                                                                                 
 test-mail             Run all tests and mail the results to your team.                                                                                                                         
 updatedb (updb)       Execute the update.php process from the command line                                                                                                                     
 variable-delete       Delete a variable.                                                                                                                                                       
 (vdel)                                                                                                                                                                                         
 variable-get (vget)   Get a list of some or all site variables and values.                                                                                                                     
 variable-set (vset)   Set a variable.                                                                                                                                                          
 watchdog-delete       Delete watchdog messages.                                                                                                                                                
 (wd-del, wd-delete)                                                                                                                                                                            
 watchdog-list         Show available message types and severity levels. A prompt will ask for a choice to show watchdog messages.                                                              
 (wd-list)                                                                                                                                                                                      
 watchdog-show         Show watchdog messages.