WebAdmin : error when trying to uninstall a disabled plugin

[anonymous]

I had installed a pluging in the local plugins directory. Then I unchecked the box Enabled, trying to disable it. It didn't disable it because it was localy installed. However, a disabled line was written in the trac.ini file.

Then when I tried to uninstall the plugin, WebAdmin came back to me with an error saying it could not find the plugin which was just uninstalled. The plugin file was removed correctly, but the disabled line in the trac.ini file was still there.

[Christian Boos]

Worth to be verified.

[xurizaemon]

I can confirm this issue affected us too. However, it may just be an issue with the intuitive process of uninstalling plugins.

Our plugin was installed in the local plugins directory, and appeared in trac.ini as well.

I commented out the pluginname.* = enabled lines in trac.ini, but this didn't affect the plugin appearing in Trac.

So I used WebAdmin to uncheck all of the plugin entries. This didn't affect the plugin appearing either. (NB. WebAdmin's "uninstall" button was disabled, presumably because the plugin was locally installed to this project? Might help if this was explicitly documented.)

So I moved the plugin out of the local directory. This threw an error because the plugin was now referenced once more in trac.ini (as disabled, by WebAdmin).

The correct deinstallation procedure (which worked for me) was: uncomment references in trac.ini, remove .egg file from plugins dir, restart Apache.

[xurizaemon]

Addendum to previous report: Trac 0.10.3-1etch2, TracWebAdmin 0.1.2dev-r4429

[osimons]

Following #3833, the plugin loading and enable/disable has been much improved for 0.11. The handling of the trac.ini settings should not be an issue with latest version. If disabled in Admin, the plugin will no longer be visible or otherwise be in use.

However, the main issue here is that Trac can't effectively unload a module (plugin) that is already loaded in memory. It needs a restart without the plugin being available for that to happen. And, as we should not really move, remove or delete code files that are in use, I'm not sure what the best option is - a bit of a catch-22 actually.

Also, with a multi-project setup that plugin loaded from one project will show up in other projects and may well be enabled and in use elsewhere.

The simple workaround for this is to remove the 'Uninstall' button as it cannot be used in a practical manner. That is at least a quick fix for the current situation.

[osimons]

Moving this onto my to-do.

[osimons]

Commenting out the 'Uninstall' div.

[osimons]

Above patch just comments out the 'Uninstall' button/div so that it does not display. At least a quick fix to remove the illusion that a plugin can be uninstalled reliably once it has been loaded…

Patch should be good for next 0.11.2, I hope?

As for the longer term future of plugin uninstall, I'm quite uncertain as I don't see any way to reliably provide a web-interface to remove loaded plugins. If no-one else has a good idea for how this can be done, we should likely also permanently remove all the template + python code that relates to this feature.

[osimons]

Patch committed in [7599], and uninstalling plugins through webadmin is no longer possible. See TracPlugins#Uninstalling for how to uninstall plugins.

Closing the ticket against 0.11.2, but leaving a FIXME: in the template comment for future reference - with hopes of reviving the feature at some stage if a good solution is found.