On Thu, 2007-09-13 at 12:58 +0200, Lorenzo wrote: > Yes but there are betas and nighly just for testing! :D > Anyway I think it would be always possible to disable it, if WP notice that > it can't work properly on the host it will be turned off. > > Pheraps implementing that plugin the testing should be more intensive but > IMHO it's very important for WP and its use. ;)
An automatic upgrade is not only a very sensitive but also a complex task. It means automatic downloading, deleting/inserting files, running an upgrade procedure (this being the process in a nutshell). Each of these steps can fail if the developer has overseen a detail. Of course, my plugin makes extensive pre-checks, so luckily there were few real failures so far. By the way, I emphasize backups very much, so people were luckily always able to restore after a failure. If you make an upgrading solution a part of the core, many people will assume that it's absolutely perfect, and omit the tedious task of doing backups. If the plugin fails, the whole installation can be broken. Let's assume one of the both plugins is taken into the core, after it has been thoroughly tested. Let's assume the plugin is at this point 99.9 percent perfect, which means a failure rate of 0.1 percent. Assuming that roughly two million WordPress users would be affected with each upgrade, and assuming that half of them use the plugin once it's in the core, this would mean that each WP upgrade using the plugin breaks 1000 WordPress installations (YMMV, but you will always end with an unacceptably high number of broken WP installations). How ever high that number is, having the plugin in the core means that any failures will be a business of the core developers, in the sense of maintenance as well as reputation. I am very happy that my plugin works flawlessly for the vast majority of the users. However, in case of doubt, I recommend anybody to do a manual upgrade where they know what's happening. In fact, the actual purpose of this plugin was to provide a tool for experienced users who have to maintain a number of blogs for rather unexperienced ones and who can look at the code or manually fix things in case anything goes wrong. By the way: If you have it as plugin, you would also have to make sure that the plugin upgrades itself, in case there is an unforseen change in the WP core which the upgrade routine doesn't reflect. Also, you would have to provide a full-fledged backup/restore solution, so at least a larger number of users (you'll never catch them all) will do the backups. And you must make sure that those both tasks also work nearly perfect. All the above are things I thought about when people first said that this plugin should be in the core package. Don't get me wrong, it's a big honour for a developer when his code is integrated into the core of such a great and widespread software as WordPress. But the best for the community of WordPress users is to select plugins themselves, read the plugins' docs and other users' feedback and decide then which way to go. I admit that this is not easy, and it also bears a number of problems (like users being too lazy or not aware of the necessity of upgrading). But these cannot be handled with a seemingly "simple" out-of-the-box solution. Alex -- Alex Günsche Zirona OpenSource-Consulting Karlsgraben 56 D-52064 Aachen Tel: +49 241 4758864 0 Fax: +49 241 4758864 1 Web: http://www.zirona.com ----------------------------------------------------------------------- This e-mail is digitally signed with GPG. If you receive a warning that the sender/key isn't trustworthy, please import the public key for this mail address from www.zirona.com/misc/ag.asc or ignore this warning. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Alex Günsche, Zirona OpenSource-Consulting Blogs: http://www.zirona.com/ | http://www.regularimpressions.net PubKey for this address: http://www.zirona.com/misc/ag.ml2007.asc _______________________________________________ wp-testers mailing list [email protected] http://lists.automattic.com/mailman/listinfo/wp-testers
