False alarms on Status report

Maybe it would be easier to change xmlsitemap_regenerate_needed to a timestamp for when that value was set, and compare the time difference between now and that instead of when it was last generated. I'd rather not be saving 'fake' data for when the files were actually generated.

This could still be an issue. Updated the sitemap, still getting the message. Perhaps the patch was not applied or no good solution found yet? Thanks!

FYI for Drupal 8 you can manually set the cron_threshold_error and cron_threshold_warning values in your xmlsitemap.settings config to make this go away for longer. For Drupal 7 you would edit the cron_threshold_error and cron_threshold_warning variables.

I'm still confused about why this needs to be changed, because you'd only see this as a warning or error, if you're also getting an error about cron not being run in a long time. For example, my last cron run was 10 hours ago on my local. I have edited a bunch of content, and the xmlsitemap_regenerate_needed flag is TRUE. But I don't see any warning message until I exceed the cron_threshold_warning value. Are you also using a minimum lifetime setting in the XML sitemap settings? Could you take a screenshot of your status report page showing that there is not a cron warning, but there is an XML sitemap warning?

@AdamPS: Oh thank you, that helps explain it a bit more.

I think this should resolve it without needing to set anything else. This also takes into account if cron regeneration is disabled, and re-uses the system settings as intended (using our own settings shouldn't have happened in the D8 porting process).

Adding test coverage.

Left in a test debugging line, try this one.

This time using the correct setting in the test.

One more incorrect state variable, should correct the tests.

I think we should definitely continue following up with making the regenerate_needed flag a timestamp instead of a boolean, so we can accurately use that. It's going to require more changes, so I think this is a good fix for now and we can continue to iterate on it.

If cron is running (cron_last is set), but XML sitemap regeneration isn't working. I don't know if this this case can occur, but if so it is vital to generate warnings/errors and I think your patch won't do it.

Yeah this is an interesting case, the user would continue to see that the last generated time gets further and further away, and we should be logging errors or exceptions that happen with the regeneration process, so hopefully they are reviewing logs. Making the regenerate_needed a timestamp would also solve this.

The patch retires two existing settings. What about sites that have carefully set the existing settings for a particular reason?

Well frankly the module is still in alpha for this reason, I'm noticing a lot of changes like this which went the wrong direction with the module port. This was a regression from the Drupal 7.x-2.x version. If a site administrator has the ability to manually set those configuration values (because they are not exposed in the UI) then I would think that they would have the ability to update the system.cron settings if desired. For site administrators inconvenienced for this change, I offer my apologies and hope they can understand I don't want to be storing additional settings.

I've filed #3007153: Store xmlsitemap_regenerate_needed flag as a timestamp instead of a boolean as a follow-up. Committed #25 to 8.x-1.x. Moving this for consideration for 7.x-2.x now.