Support for Drupal 7 is ending on 5 January 2025—it’s time to migrate to Drupal 10! Learn about the many benefits of Drupal 10 and find migration tools in our resource center.Many functions in Drupal are not allowed to be called from inside hook_update_N(), often because they will break things when the module is updated while it is disabled.
For some fun background reading:
#734710: API functions that invoke hooks don't work as expected when a disabled module is being uninstalled
#773828: Upgrade of disabled modules fails
For Drupal 7, the suggested solution in the second issue was to document this better, so that is what this issue is about. It's pretty tricky, though. Some of your own module's API functions can be used in hook_update_N() if you specifically load your .module file, but that won't work for all of them. And a number of standard Drupal API functions won't work correctly either. See for example:
#717902: Updated DB schema not available in module update functions
#737816: user_role_grant_permissions() throws PDOException when used with non-existent permissions (e.g. a permission for a disabled/uninstalled module)
| Comment | File | Size | Author |
|---|---|---|---|
| #7 | 794192-7-document-install.patch | 861 bytes | kim.pepper |
| #5 | 794192-document-install.patch | 861 bytes | kim.pepper |
Comments
Comment #1
joachim CreditAttribution: joachim commentedMarking as a bug in documentation.
Comment #2
jhodgdonThis is a complex issue, but it should be fixed...
Comment #3
pillarsdotnet CreditAttribution: pillarsdotnet commentedSee related issue: #1149580: Prevent url() from expanding aliases while the installer is running.
Comment #4
jhodgdonI am reviving this issue.
We actually have a separate issue right now that is taking care of documenting that you can't use the schema or hooks:
#1134088: Properly document update-api functions
So I think all we need to document here is that if you use a function from your .module file or an include file, you need to load that file. That should actually be a good Novice issue, and I think we should do it in 8.x (at least for now, because I don't really think that #773828: Upgrade of disabled modules fails is likely to be fixed any time soon).
Comment #5
kim.pepperAdded documentation for #4
Comment #6
jhodgdonLooks good!
A bit of a comma problem though... I think we either need to remove the comma in the first line here, or add another one at the end:
Comment #7
kim.pepperHere's another attempt with correct comma implementation. I should have paid more attention in grammar classes.
Kim
Comment #8
jhodgdonThat looks better, thanks! When attaching a patch, you need to set to "needs review" to launch the test bot and alert human reviewers too (I'm going directly to RTBC which will also launch the test bot).
Comment #9
jhodgdonThanks! Committed to 8.x and 7.x.