Marketplace warning or separate section for v9

JohntheFish · October 13, 2021, 12:23pm

To gauge the risk, I have started a straw poll on v9 compatibility.

For anyone wanting to provide technical details or concerns on GitHub, the issue is at

github.com/concretecms/concretecms

v9 - Proposal to ensure addons are compatible with v9 before updating a site or installing addon

opened 01:26PM - 19 Aug 21 UTC

closed 10:17PM - 16 Feb 22 UTC

JohntheFish

Type:Enhancement Status:Proposal Product Areas:Upgrading

My experience of running v8 addons on v9rc sites so far has been mixed. Simpl…e blocks can look OK on the page, but the block edit dialogs usually need some work to look good because form controls, floats, bootstrap labels and font awesome icons have all changed. More complex edit dialogs, dashboard pages and code that integrates with other core functionality need a lot of work. Not many major changes, but a big accumulation of all the time tracking down many little changes and testing. Many sites owners will update from v8 to v9 without thoroughly checking addon compatibility first, then either discover that dialogs etc are seriously glitched or brick their site. We get a rush of ‘failed update’ forum posts on every major core update and I can foresee v9 being a record breaker. Many v9 fresh install site owners will also try and install addons/themes that have not been updated for addon compatibility and consequently glitch or brick their site. My proposed solution is to have a flag in package controllers confirming maximum version compatibility. If not set, it will default to the previous major core version. Package install and the core upgrade procedure in v9 can then check that flag and refuse to update unless all packages are already flagged v9 compatible. for example ``` // core base class abstract class Package implements LocalizablePackageInterface{ public function getMaxAppVersion(){ if(isset($this->maxAppVersion)){ return $this->maxAppVersion; } else { // sets a default of v8.latest that prevents any un-confirmed v8 package being installed on v9 // max handles special case of v7 addons already in use on v8 sites return max( 8, extract_major_version_from($this->appVersionRequired )); } } } // An updated package class Controller extends Package { protected $appVersionRequired = '8.5.2'; // This package has been updated by the developer and confirmed as v9 compatible, but will not be compatible with v10. protected $maxAppVersion = '9'; //.... } // A package that has not been updated class Controller extends Package { protected $appVersionRequired = '8.5.2'; // This package has not been updated. It defaults to only being compatible with v8 //.... } // A package built for v9 class Controller extends Package { protected $appVersionRequired = '9.0.0'; // This package has been built for v9. It is automatically compatible with all v9, but will not be compatible with v10. //.... } ``` This flag can also be used in the marketplace to provide a big 'v9 Compatible' rosette on updated packages. The mechanism is automatically capable of handling further major version updates. A beneficial side effect of this flag will be to weed out addons that are not actively maintained in the marketplace.