[wp-meta] [Making WordPress.org] #8009: Phased releases and roll-outs of plugins

[Making WordPress.org]

#8009: Phased releases and roll-outs of plugins
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 Reporter:  matt              |       Owner:  (none)
     Type:  enhancement       |      Status:  new
 Priority:  normal            |   Milestone:
Component:  Plugin Directory  |  Resolution:
 Keywords:  has-patch         |
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Comment (by joshuaflow):

 Replying to [comment:21 dd32]:
 > Updating the WordPress plugin updates system to allow a forced downgrade
 ''would'' be useful in certain circumstances, however we are limited in
 what we can do here IMHO.

 Agreed and this a good limitation of WordPress.org to call out.  My
 comments are simply noting the items we've found as requirements for this
 system to work in the case of WooCommerce.

 > For many plugin authors, they'd be able to release a patched version in
 that time instead. So much so that I suspect many authors would not abort
 a release until they knew what was wrong (ie. to prevent one persons
 plugin conflict stopping the release that works for a million others).

 I think this is true ''most'' of the time.  There are 2 scenarios where
 this doesn't unfold well:

 1. The fix takes longer than that window to resolve.

 This can be worked around by customers manually reverting or by providing
 a patch release that reverts the offending code.  The latter does mean
 more patch releases, which may or may not be cumbersome depending on the
 plugin's release process.

 2. The issue is more widespread and affects more customers.

 In the rare case where a critical issue is discovered in a larger number
 of sites (due to different hosting environments, plugin conflicts, etc) I
 don't think it's acceptable to leave a site non-functional for up to 12
 hours.

 Again, these problems tend to hit larger plugins more due to the number of
 plugins consuming their APIs, hooks, or endpoints in unconventional ways.
 This case may be the minority of plugins, so I don't want to block the
 discussion with this point, but I do think it would be useful (at least at
 the customer level) to more easily rollback one of these updates.

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Ticket URL: <https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/8009#comment:23>
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