Install fails with 3.7 Kitchen Sink version - bad xml file

[railer]

Hi there!

Just passing on this note from one of my developers who says that the 3.7 Kitchen Sink install package here: http://fabrikar.com/download
is either missing plugin files, or has typos in their filenames. That's the gist of it. This first happened on a J 3.6.5 site.

When attempting to install it it fails, generating this error:

Error
Archive does not exist
Error installing package

Warning
Install path does not exist.
Package Install: There was an error installing an extension: plg_fabrik_3.7.zip

I'm attaching the xml file from a repaired version he fixed. I changed the file type to .txt so I could upload it. He said that if you compare it to the pkg_fabrik.xml file in your package you'll see what he modified.

I have been able to reproduce this on a second Joomla 3.7.2 test site, which gave me the messages above. Note that installing with a version with the corrected xml file is successful.

Hope this helps.

 

[cheesegrits]

Ah, OK. Yeah, that'll be an issue in the build script, it must be building a ZIP before it does replacements on the {version} strings (etc) in the XML Which is strange, because I was pretty sure we just used the same 'pkg' ZIP for the core inside "sink" that we then uplaod for the main pkg download. So I wuld have expected it to be broken in both places.

Anyway, moot, as the "sink" package is very probably going to go away in the next release. When we first started, it was a convenient way of installing the core (with the "out of box" plugins) plus all optional plugins. Hence "sink", from "everything and the kitchen sink". That was back when we only had maybe a dozen non-core plugins, none of which were large, and it really didn't matter if you installed everything.

But over the years we've added something in the region of 100 non-core plugins, and we really don't recommend anyone just installs all of them. Only install what you need. Just having plugins in your #__extensions table slows J! and Fabrik down, even if you don't use them. And some of them are somewhat "experimental", Here Be Dragons, and probably not things you want on a live server. Nothing alarming or anything I could point to specifically, but the less code you don't need, the smaller your attack surface.

Moving forward, I'll probably just recommend that if for some strange reason you really do want to install everything in one Swell Foop (<tm>), update from github and do a "Discover" of everything in J!. This erects a small bar, so beginners will be deterred from installing 100 plugins they don't need.

The "sink" package has stuck around mostly just because I've never gotten round to removing it from the build script.

-- hugh

 

[BasilC]

You recommend uninstalling unused Fabrik plugins. I have a lot because of updating from Github. Would disabling them improve performance, or do they actually need to be uninstalled?

 

[cheesegrits]

Just as an aside, updating from github doesn't actually install them, it just copies the code up to the server. They'll only get installed if you do a "Discover" in J! admin, and specifically install them.

Disabling is probably good enough. Most J! code that deals with plugins specifically excludes disabled ones from the query.

-- hugh