As per a recent thread on the devel list, it might be a good idea to add another term to our "Release type" vocabulary called something like "Schema change". The idea is to give maintainers a structured way to communicate to their users that a given release is changing the DB schema, both to alert them to potential trouble during an upgrade, and to remind them they'll need to run update.php, etc. That certainly seems like good information which would be useful to communicate.

Unfortunately, it depends on maintainers to remember to include it. So, it's not like end-users can completely trust a release that doesn't say "Schema change" not to alter the schema. :( Therefore, it's not clear this would be a good idea. Also, due to human error, it seems fairly common that careless maintainers make new release nodes and just select all those terms without thinking about it at all. So, the reverse is also true, just because a release is marked as "Schema change" doesn't actually mean it, either. :(

Therefore, it's not 100% clear this new terms is a good idea, but I'm willing to discuss it before I just veto it outright. ;)

Comments

drumm’s picture

Running update.php clears out the caches too. That is a good idea on any code change.

agentrickard’s picture

If the option were there, I'd use it. So I would like to see it added.

I'm not sure if people even use the current flags, but it would be very good if 'schema change' could be read by the update_status module -- either through this flag or another means. Then I could be informed if I had not properly run update.php when upgrading a module.

dww’s picture

admin/reports/status (and therefore, most of admin/*) tells you if you haven't run update.php, so i'm not sure what good it would do for update_status to care about this term. but, i know some maintainers would be responsible enough to use this term correctly, so i think it's probably worth adding, even if we didn't change update_status about it at all.

i'll still hold off a day or so to see how this thread evolves, but i'm leaning towards adding the term.

we should also open another issue about giving this vocabulary more visibility (and validation) in the d.o UI. for example, it'd be slick if we could use something like http://drupal.org/project/taxonomy_fields and add a required CCK nodereference field to release nodes that have the "Security update" term, which points to the SA for that release...

agentrickard’s picture

In a perfect world, the 'you haven't run the update' message would tell me specifically what hasn't been updated.

But I'm picky that way. The current warning message is sufficient for most users and uses, so I withdraw the request.

silverwing’s picture

Webmaster Issue Queue Cleanup - 2 year old issue

re #3 - holding off a day... or a couple years...

Still a good idea?

tvn’s picture

Status: Active » Closed (won't fix)

Closing old issues. Please re-open if necessary.

dddave’s picture

Guess not?
Closing old, stale issues as part of the webmaster's clean-up sprint of DrupalCon Prague.