are you upgrading plugins to 1.9?

i have been upgrading my elgg 1.8 plugins to run on 1.9. so far the changes have been simple and fast. the most complex part will be converting my site's theme.

i decided to progress in 2 stages. stage 1 is to make the needed changes to get the plugins to run at all with 1.9, without errors or warnings. 

stage 2 is to refine the code to improve performance and to make use of new features in 1.9.

i notice that i am using many plugins for other coders in the community, such as coldtrick and matt beckett (among others).. matt has said that he has so many plugins that he is unable to predict how long it will take him to upgrade them all. i am wondering if anyone else is willing/able to offer an eta for their own plugins?
i am also thinking that maybe we could unite to share the load of upgrading the many plugins, once we are more familiar with what is needed and possible.

anyone?

  • a communal effort would certainly be useful, I remember upgrading lots of other peoples plugins to 1.8 when it came out.  Steve and Juho have been working on my comment tracker plugin for 1.9.

    That's what github is for!

  • Good discussion topic. Maybe some coordinated work can be organized to identify plugins that the original developer is not already working on for Elgg 1.9 (i.e. the help would be welcome) and to work on plugins that were abandoned by the original developers. Some developers might already have started to work on upgrading their plugins (or at least some of them) and it might be helpful to know about this, too, to avoid starting in parallel only to find out that a new release appears here soon afterwards. Maybe checking out the corresponding github repos of plugins (if existing) could reveal if there's currently any development going on. For example, Coldtrick is already working heavily on Elgg 1.9 versions of their plugins (on some of the popular ones at least).

    I've already published upgraded versions for Elgg 1.9 of all the plugins I've released on the community site. So, I'm not in urgent need for help regarding ugrading plugins as such. Still, bug reports (if any bugs are found) would still be most appreciated.

    Regarding upgrading other plugins to Elgg 1.9 I'm afraid I won't be available (at least from todays perspective) for the next few months as I would like to concentrate first on upgrading some Elgg 1.7 plugins to be able to upgrade my site to Elgg 1.8 (or more likely straight to Elgg 1.9) at long last. Of course, I will release the outcome of the upgrading for Elgg 1.8 (plus Elgg 1.9) once finished. Though I'm afraid one plugin at least will only be available on github due to its license.

  • +1 for GitHub + PR for updating plugins. Matt is one of the most prolific plugin devs around and I know he'd appreciate help. In general, it's best not to expect or ask for ETAs from devs in the OSS community. It's generally considered bad form since it's volunteer work!

    As for the theme, it shouldn't be that big of a chore to update themes for 1.9, unless you're planning to use the new responsive theme. There weren't a ton of views changes like from 1.7 to 1.8.

  • I'll just link again to the plugin which I created exactly to help upgrading to newer versions of Elgg. It's not 100% solution, but should help with updating most of deprecated code usage. http://community.elgg.org/plugins/1213751/1.0.3/code-analyzer

    If you'd be able to describe some kind of process you're coming through often while upgrading plugins and which could benefit from automating it or at least detecting, please let me know in plugins discussion.

  • Cleaning out and upgrading plugins from dev's no longer maintaining them is a good idea, but indeed needs some coordination. How do we know which ones are still in use and need upgrading and indeed how do we know that not someone else is doing it.

    I am not taking that plounge unless I would be in great need to upgrade a plugin anyway. But even now there are a lot of broken plugins available that even won't work in 1.8

    So some coordinated house cleaning would be good for all users. Who could take the lead in that ?

  • I have also a bit outdated stats (few months old), showing up distribution of declared compatibility of community plugins (set by the author on particular package). Note that it includes all revisions, not only the newest one: http://composer.i.srokap.pl/stats.html

    It looks like declared 1.8 compatibility is quite good.

  • What does declared 1.8 compatibility mean ? That the author says it is compatible ? If so, does that mean it is working properly nor does it mean it is still supported or is truely 1.8 compatible. I've seen quite some 1.8 plugins with leftover 1.7 code in it, which "should" break in 1.9

  • Declared compatibility is what checkboxes were selected by the author while uploading revision to the community page. If author has bugs in the plugin, you should report it to the author.

  • Okay clear. So no coordinated approach or cleaning the plugin database, but leave it up to the authors ?

    There is at least one good reason for that, it will not hurt the feelings of plugin authors, but will leave admins in distress on various topics on whether to upgrade or not, what does and does not work etc..

    I am not sure what is more important for the adoption of 1.9 but honestly have no experience in this matters so my opininion is also not more than that.

  • Would be great if you kept a record of all the things you need to change so we can document these in the upgrade instructions.