[RFC] Disable the extensions while updating the board

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Nicofuma
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[RFC] Disable the extensions while updating the board

Post by Nicofuma »

Context
The updates can introduce backward compatibility breaks for the extensions.

Per example 3.1.0-RC2 introduces a new abstraction layer for the database layer represented by a new interface \phpbb\db\driver\driver_interface which has to be used instead of the abstract driver class \phpbb\db\driver\driver. With this update all the extensions which need the database driver to work were broken. And any board having one of these extension enabled was inaccessible (a PHP error was displayed).

Proposal
Disable the extensions during the update.

But there is a few questions about this:
  1. Does we want to disabled the extensions during the update?
  2. If yes, should it be done only for the automatic updater?
  3. Should these extensions have a special status saying they were disabled by the updater?
Pro
  • The board can not be broken during the update process, so the admin can not think that his board was broken by the core.
  • To complete...
Cons
  • In 3.0.x the MODs are not disabled during the update.
  • The admin can still broke his board by re-enabling the broken extension (he can't really know that the extension is broken).
  • When disabling the extension we can lose some config settings (ie: the default captcha) which will not be restored when the extension will be enabled again.
  • To complete...
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nickvergessen
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Re: [RFC] Disable the extensions while updating the board

Post by nickvergessen »

I think we should stay with the old 3.0 way here.
Let it break, if it does break. Having to re-enable all extensions after an update is more annoying then useful here.
All admins will try to reenable the extensions anyway. So instead of having them to enable them and then get the error,
let them just see the error right away.
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MattF
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Re: [RFC] Disable the extensions while updating the board

Post by MattF »

nickvergessen wrote:I think we should stay with the old 3.0 way here.
Let it break, if it does break. Having to re-enable all extensions after an update is more annoying then useful here.
All admins will try to reenable the extensions anyway. So instead of having them to enable them and then get the error,
let them just see the error right away.
+1

I can only imagine the pain of having to re-enable dozens of extensions after an update :cry:

I think a better solution may be to promote the STK for 3.1, which should have a Disable all Extensions feature, which could then be used in those cases where a board breaks on update due to extensions.

Once 3.1 is officially released, these breaks should probably be more rare than right now, because we are still changing things quite a bit now.
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Sumanai
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Re: [RFC] Disable the extensions while updating the board

Post by Sumanai »

Maybe just check before updating extensions for compatibility with the latest version board? And displays a warning about the potential incompatibility with the list of extensions and offer to update them before updating board?
Sorry for my English.

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nickvergessen
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Re: [RFC] Disable the extensions while updating the board

Post by nickvergessen »

Sumanai wrote:Maybe just check before updating extensions for compatibility with the latest version board? And displays a warning about the potential incompatibility with the list of extensions and offer to update them before updating board?
Not really sure if that should be in phpbb, but I guess some kind of compatibility script would be nice to have
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