Upgrading from 2.0 to 2.1 removes DER module without uninstalling it first [#3524553]

Problem/Motivation

After upgrading to 2.1.x, I get a white screen of death, because it removed the Dynamic Entity Reference module without uninstalling it first. If I try to uninstall it, it requires me to delete my linkchecker entity type and uninstall the module as well.

Two documentation issues:

1) The upgrade steps need to be documented in the release notes and the README.md

Steps to reproduce

composer require 'drupal/linkchecker:^2.1@beta'

Proposed resolution

Document the proper method of upgrading in both README.md and in the release notes of affected releases.

Remaining tasks

Create Merge Request for README.md and update release notes for affected releases.

User interface changes

API changes

not really

Data model changes

N/A

Comments

Comment #1

14 May 2025 at 21:37

solideogloria created an issue. See original summary.

Comment #2

yevko commented 15 May 2025 at 07:52

I confirm the issue. drush updb is failing after the upgrade to 2.1 : The "field_item:dynamic_entity_reference" plugin does not exist.

Comment #3

dhansen commented 30 July 2025 at 13:25

Version:	2.1.x-dev	» 2.0.2
Priority:	Normal	» Major

The same is also happen on a move from 2.0.0 to 2.0.2. Looking at the original ticket for this issue there was someone who had the same issue https://www.drupal.org/project/linkchecker/issues/3375553#comment-15767610

Basically the "workaround" is to composer require 'drupal/dynamic_entity_reference:^3.2' prior to trying to run the database update. I've confirmed this works, though it doesn't resolve the issue of the site breaking on update. I'm bumping up the priority to Major and moving the Version to 2.0.2 to reflect the issue being a part of recommended releases.

Comment #4

maxdmayhew commented 30 July 2025 at 17:24

I am also experiencing this issue. The workaround to include dynamic_entity_reference like we're all doing works but worth noting.

Comment #5

joseph.olstad

French

commented 30 July 2025 at 20:39

Yes please manually perform the workaround. I'm not sure of a better way at this time that would work for everyone as some folks may still need dynamic_entity_reference.

It's a catch 22 here.

Then have a celebration for no longer needing dynamic_entity_reference! A significant simplification!