Plugin update sometimes missing files

Hi there,

I develop https://wordpress.org/plugins/podlove-podcasting-plugin-for-wordpress/. Once in a while I get reports of an update resulting in a “white screen of death”. With the help of some error reports I was able to catch this case and now I’m checking for missing files before initializing the plugin — so I can at least display a warning to the user.

Here’s the section of code: https://github.com/podlove/podlove-publisher/blob/2.3.6/podlove.php#L67

Here’s a recent tweet with a screenshot of the resulting admin notice: https://twitter.com/FlowScroll/status/674884149082234880

My guess: I am using composer and have a lot of files. On cheap hosting, the update process sometimes dies, WordPress does not catch it and leaves the plugin in an unusable state.

If anybody has any input on why exactly this happens / how I can reproduce it / how I can prevent or fix it, I’d be glad.

Regards, Eric