Migrating Test Cases from 1.8.3 to 1.9.5

[amarchment]

My current TestLink implementation is version 1.8.3. I had created a sandbox environment for the 1.9.5 to help me test the latest version. I am happy with this new version. However, I am not able to properly import my old test cases that I had exported from my 1.8.3 system. The test cases exported properly and they import most of the information. But it seems like the XML structure for import/export has changed. As such, the Steps section does not get imported. There is obviously good information here that I do not want top manually have to re-enter.

Do I have any options here? The only one that I can think of is to upgrade my 1.8.3 installation up to a 1.9.5 and then export the test cases. Would this handle the migration of the data properly? It would take some time and effort, so I do not want to do it if it will not.

If an upgrade will not help, are there any other options short of me writing a tool to update the XML to the new structure?

[fman]

using xml export / import is a bad path to follow

best option migrate slowly

1.8.3 => 1.8.5
1.8.5 => 1.9.0
1.9.0 => 1.9.1
and so on
is the way to go