show Zotero version compatibility of plugins prior to updating to a new Zotero version

dstillman Zotero Team
This discussion was created from comments split from: Announcing Zotero 9.
  • tim820
    edited 4 days ago
    Could a feature please be added to show the Zotero version compatibility of all of a user's current plugins, to be checked prior to updating to a new Zotero version ?

    As is, a user either has to take their chances that some of their "mission critical" plugins may not work when they agree to Zotero's version update message - "It is recommended that you apply this update as soon as possible" - or manually do what I have just done ...
    1. find the extensions folder under the Profiles folder.
    https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/profile_directory
    2. open each plugin's XPI (ZIP) file in 7-Zip.
    3. Open the mainfest.json text file in that ZIP file.
    4. Check if the max compatible version listed there is still 8 or has been updated to 9.

    That required a lot of clicks for each of about 20 plugins. About one third of my plugins have not yet updated that setting.

  • northword
    (offtipic but may be helpful for @tim820) You can also check the compatibility status of the plugin in https://zotero-chinese.com/en/plugins/ .
  • damnation
    edited yesterday at 11:19am
    I think that'd be quite helpful also. Considering how many users come here with the same question.
  • tim820
    Thanks @northword. I was actually going to mention that very good plugin repository in my post, but at the time I wrote it today the dropdown menu on the site had not been updated to allow a compatibility check for volume 9. I see that it has now been updated to allow that check. BTW do you know how the site determines compatibility ? Does it check each plugin's manifest.json file ?

    Also, a simple first step for Zotero would be to add the max compatible Zotero version to each loaded plugin's page in the Tools\Plugins manager.
  • northword
    @tim820 yes, it checks every plugin's manifest.json.
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    @tim820: I addressed this the first time you suggested it:

    https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/comment/505998/#Comment_505998
    https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/comment/506026/#Comment_506026

    Plugin developers need to keep their plugins updated.

    Now that we're doing rapid releases, we'll be aggressively dropping support for previous major versions. E.g., Zotero 9 introduces web-based login for security reasons, and Zotero 8 won't even be able to log in for syncing in the near future. Now that we're adding new types and fields after a 15-year hiatus, those will immediately prevent previous versions from syncing some library data. We're not going to let unmaintained plugins hold back these kinds of updates.

    Going forward, though, we'll try to make clearer announcements on the dev list about when a given major version has been frozen and it's time for plugin developers to check and bump compatibility. We should've done that this time — apologies for that. (We posted about Zotero 9 a couple days ago, and we'll give plugin developers a few days to update compatibility before we push out Zotero 9 as an auto-update.)

    For most releases, it shouldn't take plugin developers more than few minutes per release to update compatibility. Beta versions ignore strict_max_version, so plugin developers (and power users) should be running the betas and should have already caught any compatibility problems by the time a version is frozen. I think once everyone gets into the swing of the new release schedule, any plugins that people should actually be using should be marked compatible by the time a release comes out.

    As I mentioned in the comments linked above, we'll also be introducing new, sandboxed APIs that will be (mostly) guaranteed to remain stable between major versions, and that may let us avoid requiring strict_max_version bumps for plugins that use only those APIs. But plugins that choose to continue using full API access will need to maintain their plugins.
  • tim820
    That's all good. But that is all addressed at plugin developers - whose stricter attention to updating Zotero compatibility will hopefully benefit users in the future.

    It doesn't directly address the current *user* dilemma though - users who are having to stick their neck out with potential plugin loss when doing what Zotero recommends ... to update to the new Zotero version. Because there is no *easy* way for the user to check their plugins' version compatibility (the Chinese plugin repository has now been updated to allow that check, but it still requires a user to tediously check the list plugin by plugin for what might be one or two dozen plugins they use).

    Please at least extract and put that max Zotero version information on each plugin's page in the user's Plugin Manager under Tools\Plugins (if at some point in the future that is no longer a hard limit then that information could be modified). Or any better solution you have in mind.

    The official release day of Zotero 9 resulted in at least two very popular plugins breaking - Zutilo and Zoplicate. Which was a surprise to many of their users (some of whom chose to revert to Version 8). That detracts from the user experience of the new Zotero version.

    We appreciate all the work that has gone into improving the plugin experience for the user, with more to come (albeit likely along with more AI-generated plugins, which may make things worse or better... maybe requiring plugin approval/licensing ?). Improving this one significant pain point will enhance that experience further.
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    edited yesterday at 2:47pm
    But that is all addressed at plugin developers - whose stricter attention to updating Zotero compatibility will hopefully benefit users in the future.
    No, I specifically addressed users in my initial response to you:
    Part of the point of rapid release is to try to ensure that everyone is on a recent version, not an old version that we can't fix problems for and that will break as soon as we make data-model changes (new fields and other long-awaited features), so providing more reasons for people not to upgrade is not the goal here.
    Obviously there are ways you can manually check compatibility, but we're not going to expose that. We do not want people running old versions of Zotero.

    Again, this was just the first rapid-release cycle, so I wouldn't draw too many conclusions from this update. We're working on various changes to 1) more reliably communicate with plugin developers, 2) make the update deadlines clearer, and 3) avoid the need for compatibility checks altogether for plugins that don't require full privileges. Those will be the real solutions to this issue.
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