How to handle extension issues after Epocrm Version Upgrade

[murugappan]

I seeking help from people who can advise me on how to handle extension issues after a Espocrm version upgrade. My problem is that the extensions quickly become incompatible due to Espocrm version upgrades. That leaves me to stay on the old version of Espocrm for sometime until the extension is upgraded especially when the existing instance of Espocrm is huge (120GB). The catch-up game becomes painful especially if there are substantial changes in the Epsocrm version upgrades. I had to drop all the extensions in my re-engineering project and live with the basics and to use only extensions directly from Espocrm developers (none yet).

Many of the extensions are great and improve development but the fear is keeping me down especially when we realize the incompatibility only after a few months later. Interestingly, Joomla 5 has this built in extension compatibility checker that advises on which extension would fail if a Joomla upgrade is executed. Espocrm does this for the Advance Pack when i run the upgrade.

Anyone knows a methodology on how to manage this issue?

[Kharg]

Hi,

usually it is recommended to have a dev instance where you can test Espo updates and your extensions before pushing the update to production.

[murugappan]

Kharg i have 4 instances - Staging, Development, Testing and Production. Except for the Production, all other instances only have a small set of data which may not expose the defect in the extension. We have one such extension which did not work and another one that destroyed the instance. We could not identify the faulty one.

[shalmaxb]

Recommendation: Uninstall all Extensions before upgrade, make upgrade. Install one after the other extension. Maybe it happens, that an extension causes the updated app to not working anymore and you could then not be able to uninstall the faulty extension. Go into your custom folders and delete anything, that has to do with that extension: client/modules, client/custom/modules, custom/Espo/Modules and in case of more outdated extensions, there could also be rests of files in application/Espo/Modules.

Also delete the database record of that extension in the database table extensions.

After that, the app should start again, get the most recent version of your extensions. I know of Eblasoft extensions, which may fail, when an overhauled espoCRM version comes out. This is not because of bad programmng by Eblasoft but because of the complexity of those extensions. And Eymen Elkum and his guys from Eblasoft always work immediately, fast an until a fixed solution. So message to the developers, when an extension does not work with a more recent version of espoCRM.

[espcrm]

I guess this is where the beauty of Docker come in? Honestly, I have not touch Docker in any usable capacity but reading here and there it seem to be a "Sandbox" system which would save you some pain. I could be totally wrong.

[shalmaxb]

I prefer a clean installation on a webserver before Docker. I tried several times working with different Softwares and Docker, but never felt independent like in pure webserver-installation. Besides that I think the Docker files are too big.
And with espoCRM it is in most cases not difficult to find the reason for errors and you normally can get rid of them more or less easily. The system is programmed in an excellent way and the errors in most cases are due to user mistakes or not understanding, how it works.
I have a few clients with my own app and some with completely different apps and never (really never) I had to re-install espoCRm from a backup because of errors.

[murugappan]

Personally, i find Docker was an unnecessary piece. It just complicates all our workflow. In YouTube, all the course developer seem to have gone gaga over this (mess). They make a mess of CI4 and Laravel installation. Why do i need to learn another headache just to do my normal and simplistic installation. Laragon is one such mess. At time, i feel that some people in YouTube are doing this to be in the trend. Anyway, i just stick to my regular workflow. I ignore all the docker stuff.