URGENT: breaking change in plugin dependency update
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Hello,
There is a breaking change in your last update regarding topic: https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wp-6-6-and-requires-plugin-header/
The header is added but it does not consider the use of polylang-pro !!!
When updating your plugin WordPress will auto disable this plugin for all websites that use polylang-pro plugin and will not allow users to activate it as the dependency is not met.This could break all sites that use your plugin in combination with polylang-pro, without the users even noticing. Please fix this asap, before to many users are affected.
WordPress has provided a filter specifically for this “premium” plugin feature.
It is at the the bottom of the instruction page that was also shared in the previous support item, under title “New filter” https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/03/05/introducing-plugin-dependencies-in-wordpress-6-5/ (I tried to add screenshots but those fail to upload)
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Note: IF the plugin is active, and the filter is added in an update, then the filter will work and will allow the polylang-pro plugin it seems. In my case where it was already auto-deactivated due to the bad version, and hence it was already to late to work and fix the issue.
@hupe13 The hook was tested but ineffective, as you can read above.
When placing the filter hook in the plugin code it “works” as long as the plugin is active. As in “it stops wp from de-activating it automatically”. But if a user disables the plugin manually for testing, they will never be able to activate it again without going into the code and changing the “Plugins requires” header manually. Which cannot be expected from most non-developer users. Because code in inactive plugins does not run, so the slug cannot be changed from within the plugin. Maybe polylang itself could include the hook to go from -pro to the default, to make all plugins that depend on it work as long as it is active. But that would break plugins that have already set a dependency on the -pro version, so that wouldn’t be a good solution eighter and will therefor not be implemented by polylang.
And for developers like ourselves you could suggest putting in it the theme’s functions.php but… Many many sites use bought themes that do not support child themes or custom php functions, and non-developer website owners would not be able to do it and add it, let alone “unbreak” their site if an update has already done it. So for now I would say removing the header was the correct way to go.@hupe13 I’ve thought about that too but… To busy today to make a ticket 😅
Most ideal solution would be if they would allow for an “or” option in the header, for example with a |.
Like:* Requires Plugins: polylang|polylang-pro,some-other-pluginI’ll drop this support link in the core slack channel, but I fear they will not appreciate that without ticket 😅
EDIT: slack conversation: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C06U06K50Q5/p1723036896974069@hupe13 @marcinkazmierski
I’ve had a discussion about this in the “Make WordPress” slack channel.
You can read up on the conversation here: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/CULBN711P/p1723040226494739 (+ comments after)
In short: it is up to polylang-pro (read: not you) to implement that filter, and as long as it does not has it implemented no plugin that depends on it (read: you) should add the header as it will break the plugin on deactivation. So you did correct in removing the header again. Discussion rises to make that more clear in the filter documentation as it is not clear now.
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