Plan for CTools 7.x-1.13 release

A bug fix release for #2828620: Regression: View pane rendering misuses and floods cache would be nice, since it is filling disks on production sites.

Since #2828620: Regression: View pane rendering misuses and floods cache is hotfixed now, it would be great to have a hotfix release and move the features to 1.14.

Is the above something that can be reconsidered? It has been 5 months since that suggestion and it doesn't look like 1.13 is anywhere near completion given the number of open issues linked to it. I am maintaining a site that is suffering from this problem ([#2828620: Regression: View pane rendering misuses and floods cache]), had the cache table fill to 1 GB in about three weeks. I would very much prefer to keep the module on an official release instead of having to use a dev release.

bump.

Panopoly builds for multisite are blowing up big time because of this cache table regression. ;-/

An official release would be nice.

this module is due for a release. 7.x-1.12 is way behind in commits, like 20 commits or more behind dev.

Unfortunately the ctools dev version has a regression, opened #2900901: entity_fields substitute keywords context should not be added for empty field output. We should probably fix that before release?

For what it's worth I'd also like request an official release asap to include the fix for the cache flooding issue.
Perhaps other issues could be deferred for a later release? Suspect this cache issue is creating huge problems for many sites.
Thank you.

automated tests started failing around 15:30 EDT august 22 , 2017
judging by the times of the commits and given about a 15 minute delay for test results(but could take hours), I suspect two commits for these two issues as possible culprits.

22 Aug 2017 at 17:31 EDT	 13 pass, 13 fail
22 Aug 2017 at 17:23 EDT	 13 pass, 13 fail
22 Aug 2017 at 17:09 EDT	 13 pass, 13 fail
22 Aug 2017 at 16:57 EDT	 13 pass, 13 fail
22 Aug 2017 at 16:52 EDT	 13 pass, 13 fail
22 Aug 2017 at 16:51 EDT	 13 pass, 13 fail
22 Aug 2017 at 16:47 EDT	 13 pass, 13 fail
worse after this
22 Aug 2017 at 16:32 EDT	 11 pass, 11 fail
22 Aug 2017 at 16:33 EDT	 11 pass, 11 fail
22 Aug 2017 at 15:05 EDT	 11 pass, 11 fail
something went wrong before 15:05 EDT factoring the delay for test results it could have been any one of the second and/or third commits but likely the third commit August 22 2017 ? guessing here
22 Aug 2017 at 14:54 EDT	 40 pass

suspect possibly:
#2575673: ctools_object_cache.name is not big enough
Here's the commit http://cgit.drupalcode.org/ctools/commit/?id=a0d256c634f3c2afddcd751f22e...
AND
#2555469: Don't mark node as viewed in comments pane
Here's the commit http://cgit.drupalcode.org/ctools/commit/?id=e586b6721e847337a21539bc161...

not 100% sure though, best bet would be to run simpletest locally one by one on all these recent commits to find out which one is causing the test result regression.

Thanks everyone for all the hard work on this release, before tagging it I would recommend someone other than myself test the installation process with the latest 7.x-1.x branch. While testing a completely unrelated issue that needed ctools, I accidentally found out that the latest dev branch of ctools is throwing errors during install about ctools_css_cache table not found (I was testing this on a fresh 7.56 site). Also, when I downgraded ctools to 7.x-1.12 it installed properly so it is most likely a recent commit that caused the install failure.

#12 reports a problem on install

I suspect this commit :
#2575673: ctools_object_cache.name is not big enough
http://cgit.drupalcode.org/ctools/commit/?id=a0d256c634f3c2afddcd751f22e...

same culprit that caused test automation failures

Identified another regression in #2905885: ctools_context_optional regression with public $required property that we need to fix before release, otherwise we will break all sites that use optional ctools contexts.

I've been testing the dev release on a fairly complicated site with multiple Panels, Minipanels, custom plugins, with contexts, visibility rules etc,. and have not found any issues. In fact, I had a bug which 7.x-1.13 will fix for me.

I was not affected by #2905885: ctools_context_optional regression with public $required property, but that is RTBC as well, so from my POV it appears the whole thing is ready for release. I'll leave it to someone else to re-RTBC it though.

TODO:
commit the RTBC patch in #2905885
commit the RTBC patch in #1188466

and then publish a release 1.13

Just a friendly reminder that it appears the next 7.x release is actually RTBC - and today is 1 year since the last 7.x release of CTools :-)

Also, when someone gets to this, it may be worth considering other RTBC issues for 7.x.

Yes, please release 1.13

commit the RTBC patch in #2905885
#2905885: ctools_context_optional regression with public $required property
commit the RTBC patch in #1188466
#1188466: Add a simple selection rule for checking if a field is empty

and then please tag 7.x-1.13 and create a release.

The number of patches required for 7.x-1.12 to work correctly is rediculously long. This release is long overdue

release++!

Hello - thank you for your work on this - but worried that the 7.x branch of this module doesn't seem to be actively maintained?

It is now over a year since the last official release, which contains a number of serious bugs. And it seems we've had a build ready for release for several months now.

Really hope we can get this new release - thank you!

Maintainers should request a new maintainer rather than abandon silently

Sent a PM to tim.plunkett about "caring for release and/or assigning new maintainer".

Try to ping japerry also

Yo done!

@japerry: I'd step forward to help comaintain.

As ctols so a huge user base, and has quite intertwined code prone to regressions, i'd suggest doing it like EVA or StageFileProxy:
* triaging issues into important-and-safe vs prone-to-break-other things
* put only low-regression-risk (including relevant-regression-risk-but-fixes-major-regression) commits in the stable release
* put relevant-regression-risk commits in a RC, monitor adoption statistics and weed out regressions without pressure

See #2941867: Encourage earlier stable releases via next-stable-RC project workflow

Of course i'll help in any case, whether we adopt that now, later or not at all.

Vgrepped the rtbcs,
postponed #2897581: Empty $cache[$table][$object->{$export['key']}] key on ctools_export_load_object,
reviewed and tagged the other 5 patches aslRTBC and low-regression-risk,

On #2456327: Multi-value field offset not working correctly when panel panes are rendered i'd really appreciate some more eyes.

Alright, i'm OK if i have someone else to bug rather than being the one bugged.

@axel.rutz Thanks for your help getting this going.

We are looking at releasing what we have right now in dev as-is. We are thinking if we add anything else we may have to do an RC release(possibly). So if it's ok with you all we'll go with that plan and look into the remaining RTBC patches for touching up and committing after the release.

Sounds like a good plan +1

Release tagged and released:
https://www.drupal.org/project/ctools/releases/7.x-1.13

Thanks japerry and joelpittet!

Finally yay!

Thanks so much for this release. It would be awesome to also see releases for:

• token 7.x-1.8
• pathauto 7.x-1.4
• redirect 7.x-1.0
• admin_menu 7.x-3.0

With the new CTools Update, I am getting the error message below on all of my sites. Please help!

The following updates returned messages
ctools module
Update #7002
Failed: PDOException: SQLSTATE[42000]: Syntax error or access violation: 1071 Specified key was too long; max key length is 1000 bytes: ALTER TABLE {ctools_object_cache} CHANGE `name` `name` VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL; Array ( ) in db_change_field() (line 3076 of /home/XXXX/public_html/includes/database/database.inc).

@cmccluskey , please see my comment in #2941920-11: Update 7002 Specified key was too long

the issue you report is related to using MyISAM instead of InnoDB, there is an easy workaround, and there is already an issue open describing how to fix this, please direct your feedback to the appropriate issue in the queue.

Thanks.