PLIP: Get rid of portal_quickinstaller

[mauritsvanrees]

Proposer : Maurits van Rees

Seconder : @hvelarde

Abstract

No longer support installing via Extensions/install.py.

Motivation

There are two ways of installing products: GenericSetup and CMFQuickInstaller. Checking if a package is currently installed, means having to check portal_setup and portal_quickinstaller, or having code that makes sure those two are in sync. The syncing is mostly in place, with some recent changes, but supporting both remains tricky. Cleanup would make this code much easier to understand.

Assumptions

Some core packages need to actually get a GenericSetup profile instead of their current install.py (for example Products.Marshall). Some need to get an uninstall profile.

Proposal & Implementation

• Update prefs_install_products_form browser view to only handle GenericSetup profiles.
• Register this view also as @@installer for easier remembering.
• Possibly create a utility instead that handles the basic operations.
• When installing a product, use its default profile, instead of using the first profile found.
• Warn before install when a product has no uninstall profile.
• Change any core code that uses the portal_quickinstaller (mostly plone.app.upgrade and tests).
• CMFQuickInstaller code should remain in Plone 5.x, but possibly stripped down and with deprecation warnings. Remove it in Plone 6. (plone.app.upgrade can get bare bones module patches to avoid possible breakage.)
• Document what third party add-ons should do.

Deliverables

• CMFPlone branch
• plone.app.upgrade branch
• CMFQuickInstaller branch
• Branches for core packages that have no default or no uninstall profile yet.
• Documentation

Risks

• Third party add-ons that have no profile, are no longer installable.
• We lose the automatic partial cleanup that CMFQuickInstaller does on uninstall (remove added skins, css, etc). The 'partial' part of this may be a benefit: a proper uninstall profile is now required instead of add-ons relying on the default cleanup being good enough.

Participants

Maurits van Rees

Note that CMFQuickInstaller is Plone specific, in spite of the CMF in the name. So compatibility with CMF is not an issue.

See http://sourceforge.net/p/plone/mailman/message/34390699/ for small initial discussion in August 2015.

[mauritsvanrees]

Working on this at the Alpine City Strategic Sprint 2016 in Innsbruck, Austria.
WIP on CMFPlone branch get-rid-of-qi:
https://github.com/plone/Products.CMFPlone/tree/get-rid-of-qi
The prefs_install_products_form on that branch no longer uses portal_quickinstaller.

[hvelarde]

+1 I think is clear, implemented with enough time in advance, documentation, deprecation warnings and so on; makes a lot of sense.

@keul thoughts? in order to run Python code, are import steps in setuphandlers.py easy and/or powerful enough in your opinion?

[keul]

No, I'm -1 about this.

Setuphandlers are powerful, I always use them, but aren't they related to an installation already running? On the other hand install.py is something can be run at the very beginning, maybe checking Python version (OK, not so useful anymore nowadays) or trying to perform some import assumption.

However I like the fact that magic uninstall operation done by quickinstaller will gone.

[mauritsvanrees]

@keul: You mean you sometimes need to run some code before applying the first import step? I have not needed that so far, but I can imagine it. Fair point. That could easily be handled by this GenericSetup pull request I created earlier:
zopefoundation/Products.GenericSetup#24
I created that for the post_handler, but the pre_handler would help you.

[keul]

@mauritsvanrees yep! This can help (hoping to see this merged)

[hvelarde]

@mauritsvanrees what about reinstalls?

[mauritsvanrees]

Reinstalls are not supported. Basically that is already true in the current add-ons control panel.

But with the new setup a reinstall would really just be an uninstall and install, which is easy to do in an add-on if you need it. The old quick installer had a specific reinstall because this did not remove any portal objects that the install had added.

[mauritsvanrees]

Added plip config in coredev:
https://github.com/plone/buildout.coredev/blob/5.0/plips/plip1340-get-rid-of-qi.cfg

[gforcada]

And a jenkins job for it: http://jenkins.plone.org/view/PLIPs/job/plip-1340-QuickInstaller/

[mauritsvanrees]

Ah, sweet, thanks.