[development] disable contribs on updates. or not: chicken egg;

[Bèr Kessels]

Hi,

http://drupal.org/upgrade/ speaks about updates that *exclude* any contribs or 
custiom modules and themes. A general consensus is to upgrade without your 
custom code. Makes sense. Made sense, its getting hairy.

With the new .install files and with the menu-a-primary links upgrades 
(requires to read the the prim/sec links, see http://drupal.org/node/49501) 
we have a problem, Houston.

If I upgrade my site without my custom modules and themes: the proper code 
(par example the proper theme settings) are not read. Resulting in dataloss 
(redoing seven primary links is not /that/ much work, but still).

If I upgrade my site with my custom modules and themes enabled and installed: 
the update will most probably fail because of PHP issues (like function not 
found: some_removed_core_function)

If I cannot upgrade my site, I cannot upgrade my modules, because my 
(development) site needs to be upgraded before it can be a test-bed for my 
upgraded module.

So, what to do? How to properly document this *before* the 4.7 release? I 
think this is purely a docs issue, its too late to fix this with code.

My shot would be to say in the manuals:
* For Developers and maintainers of modules: please use a clean database, and 
use the generate modules to create data to update and test your module 
with/for 4.7
* For Joe Schmoe: move all your stuff to a backup. Then put a new 4.7 in 
place. Then put the released 4.7 modules you had in 4.6 in your /modules. 
Then do the same for themes. Then run the upgrade.
* For Consultants and hosts: find some fancy way with symlinks, secondary IPS, 
database hotcopies, and dev/test subdomains. If you cannot, you shouldn't be 
running such a host :)

Bèr
-- 
 [ Bèr Kessels | Drupal services www.webschuur.com ]