[SOLVED] What is the proper procedure to update the Bitcoin Wallet ?

[FredCailloux]

Bitcoin-qt 25.0.0 with complete up-to-date blockchain has been running fine for a while now on a Linux Fedora PC.
I want to update to version 26.
When I go to bitcoincore.org I can download the Bitcoin-26-x86…tar.gz and verify that the file is genuine.
I proceed to uncompress the file and a folder emerge, containing 6 items.
4 subfolders are /bin, /include, /lib,  /share. As well as 2 files Bitcoin.conf and README.md
These, I assume, are the complete package necessary to have a functional Bitcoin wallet.
Yet, Upgrade instructions on bitcoincore.org are as follow:
https://bitcoincore.org/en/releases/22.0/#:~:text=How%20to%20Upgrade,%2Dqt%20(on%20Linux).

Code:

How to Upgrade
If you are running an older version, shut it down. 
Wait until it has completely shut down …, 
then …just copy over …bitcoind/bitcoin-qt (on Linux).

Reading these instructions require a download, uncompress and
strictly copy one only file, the bitcoin-qt over the existing bitcoin-qt version 25.
At least, that is what I comprehend.

The Questions:
What about all the other files and folders from the download ?
Aren’t these important to complete the upgrade of my Bitcoin wallet installation ?
What is the proper procedure to update the Bitcoin wallet to version 26 ?
Thanks

[achow101]

You can copy all of the files, but most are not needed for the average user. bitcoind and bitcoin-qt are the main binaries. They are each self contained and do not rely on each other or any other files in the release.

/bin has all of the executables. Besides bitcoind and bitcoin-qt, bitcoin-cli is the only binary that might have meaningful changes between releases that you'd want to also copy it over. But generally, it's fairly version agnostic. The other executables in /bin are just utilities and the unit tests which are really only interesting to a very small set of people who probably aren't asking this question.

/include and /lib contain files for libbitcoinconsensus. If you don't know what that is, you don't need those files.

/share has manpages and a script for generating rpc credentials, most people don't need these either, unless you like using man instead of -help.

The easiest way to install is to just copy the folders into /usr, and do the same for every upgrade. That will copy every binary over, and also overwrite any existing binaries with the new version when you upgrade.