Everything outdated?

Slluxx

I feel like almost every extension is outdated and/or abandoned. Even extensions that come with Flarum, like facebook login have problems. Also the installation process and which "version" to use is very unclear. Its not hard to understand, just from source to source different.

When i came here first (about a year ago) this place was great. I don't remember the installation process but the extensions all worked. The "Bazaar" is showing me stuff that's outdated, discontinued and breaks the software for me. Maybe i am just looking in the wrong places but right now it doesn't feel usable at all.

If you feel different about this please share your thoughts.

luceos

Thank you for your honesty and willingness to oppose the struggles you have. Let me slide into some of what you said.

Slluxx Even though all this is free, i expect (or rather expected) a minimum amount of "quality" and that extensions that are made by Flarum work after installing Flarum.

Please understand the distinction between flarum core extensions (prefixed flarum/) and third party extensions like flagrow/*, reflar/*, sijad/*, s9e/* and many more. You can be guaranteed that all core extensions are either up to date and compatible with the latest version or are officially obsoleted. This "minimum amount of quality" you mentioned can never be guaranteed for third party developers, although there are developers and teams that do an amazing job, most of these developers have also slowly become part of the staff team in one way or another due to their excellent knowledge of our package (@Kyrne, @datitisev and @sijad for example).

Slluxx For example in the Bazaar, they could get hidden if the author did not test that they work after a new version of Flarum released.

As co-author of Bazaar (and owner of Flagrow - for full disclosure sake) I have this to say:

Checking every extension (all 400+ of them) for compatibility is an insane job to do manually
Most extensions have set a minimum compatibility with Flarum, not an maximum. However Bazaar/Flagrow.io already has some intelligence by identifying specific Flarum versions as "Non Backward Compatible" thus marking these extensions as incompatible. That's also the reason you will not see extensions only compatible with Flarum beta 5 when you have Flarum beta 7.1 installed.
Both Bazaar and Flagrow.io are pretty new. Especially with Bazaar the initial versions for Flarum 7 and 7.1 were mostly proof of concepting on how to reduce the hardships of manual composer installations via commandline. I personally think the result is quite okay, even though the time out and memory requirement are a huge struggle. We have prepared an upgrade for beta 8 which - in addition to many other improvements - will be able to move processing of tasks to the background and as such remove these problems.
Currently my effort - as flagrow.io owner, not as core developer - is invested in allowing developers to publish extensions against a subscription (called premium extensions). This will further stimulate third party developers to build great extensions, well maintained and decently supported.
Once premium extensions is out in the open and we've reached a stable position, we'll be finishing up another feature in the pipeline for Bazaar/flagrow.io that allows users to provide feedback about installed extensions. With this in place we can more easily anticipate whether extensions are outdated, misbehaving or of bad quality.

Slluxx One of the extensions that i would really need is the Discord login plugin (https://discuss.flarum.org/d/3468-discord-login-extension). But the author made clear that he wont continue it and i don't have the knowledge yet to fix it.

Instead of wildly "expecting a minimum amount of quality" you could also have asked around for a developer to revive the abandoned extensions. Whether someone would do so voluntarily or for a fee is the question.

Slluxx When i came here first (about a year ago) this place was great. I don't remember the installation process but the extensions all worked. The "Bazaar" is showing me stuff that's outdated, discontinued and breaks the software for me.

You mention two different things. Bazaar made installation of extensions easier, if it doesn't for you, don't use it. If you felt installation was easier before, use that method.

Also you might get more outdated, discontinued and breaking software through Bazaar because it is able to list everything listed as being compatible with your Flarum installation. Whether it is wise to install the extension is not a decision Bazaar can nor will make for you.

Thank you for your appreciation of Flarum. I hope you will consider sticking around, because beta 8 will be a huge step forward to a stable release.

Ralkage

I don't normally respond to opinionated posts but you have my respect to which I will.

Flarum has come a long way as you can see and there have been a lot of changes. What is most often looked over is that Flarum is FREE and Open Sourced. Extensions fall under that same category and developers aren't obliged to update their extensions nor support them. Most extensions you see that have been abandoned are from developers that have moved on to other projects or just caught up in something else outside of the Internet. What may look like the extension ecosystem not growing at a fast pace as you would want it to, there are still groups and individuals that work hard to either create new extensions or revive old ones.

In fact, that is why the Friends of Flarum collaborative was created; to bring back abandoned or near abandonment extensions that developers of this community no longer have time to support.

In terms of Bazaar, it's a VERY useful tool for users who lack SSH access and wish to install extensions with little clicking or typing. It has come a LOOOONG way and for an extension to help you tell what extensions are outdated so that said extension won't mess up your forum is an AMAZING feature to have.

If you feel as if an extension that isn't abandoned isn't working the way it was intended to, it wouldn't help to create an issue on the repo's GitHub as well as engage in a friendly discussion on the extension's discussion. Now, you can also bring up extensions you want to have revived or maintained to FoF if you are feeling patient. I would highly recommend that you do this if you are concerned about your favorite extensions never seeing the light of day after a new Flarum release drops.

I hope this helps remove the curtain from the window ?

jordanjay29

Ralkage it wouldn't help to create an issue

Wouldn't help or wouldn't hurt?

Slluxx

Ralkage I appreciate your post and yes, you are right. Everything is free and made in spare time and maybe i did not make clear how much i appreciate all this. My post was not about how much i dislike Flarum but more about the huge amount of discontinued extensions which get presented in the same way as working ones.

For example in the Bazaar, they could get hidden if the author did not test that they work after a new version of Flarum released.

Even though all this is free, i expect (or rather expected) a minimum amount of "quality" and that extensions that are made by Flarum work after installing Flarum.

One of the extensions that i would really need is the Discord login plugin (https://discuss.flarum.org/d/3468-discord-login-extension). But the author made clear that he wont continue it and i don't have the knowledge yet to fix it.

Again, i respect Flarum, the authors of it and anyone who is supporting it. Its a great piece of software and i hope i can work with it for a very long time!

Ralkage

jordanjay29 Gotta help people who are hurt ❤ ?

datitisev

Slluxx In the next Flarum beta, beta 8, Bazaar will only show extensions that have the minimum version constraint set to beta 8 or higher, as flagrow.io now calculates breaking change Flarum versions (i.e. beta 5, beta 8...).
This will make sure extensions on Bazaar are beta 8 compatible, and will clean the amount of extensions available.

Kyrne

To add to this, since beta 8 is close and will break almost every extension, we don't have any motivation to release any extensions at the moment. That being said, there will be tons of new ones coming out once beta 8 hits, people have already made beta 8 extensions in anticipation.

Slluxx

luceos Thank you for taking your time which such an answer. That really shows how nice everything here is!

To reply to a few points of yours:

luceos You can be guaranteed that all core extensions are either up to date and compatible with the latest version or are officially obsoleted

As soon as i enable flarum/flarum-ext-auth-facebook - which comes with the flarum installation - flarum stops working. It is possible that its not working because of something i have done. I dont know how to debug that.

luceos Checking every extension (all 400+ of them) for compatibility is an insane job to do manually

That's why every author could check his own extension and approve that it works. I guess the plugins have some kind of meta content like the own version number, name and maybe other stuff. I don't think it would be hard to add another meta field for the latest compatible version and if its miss matching with the flarum version, it wont show in bazaar.

luceos Instead of wildly "expecting a minimum amount of quality" you could also have asked around for a developer to revive the abandoned extensions.

The minimum amount of quality was meant for resources that come with flarum, not for clearly discontinued extensions. As i said above, the facebook login extension breaks my entire site after enabling and i have to remove it via composer. Again, it might be something on my end. I can't tell.

I am installing flarum via composer create-project flarum/flarum . --stability=beta as statet here : https://flarum.org/docs/installation/

luceos I hope you will consider sticking around, because beta 8 will be a huge step forward to a stable release.

I definitely will stick around. A few broken extensions cant stop me from using a great piece of software ?

luceos

Slluxx I don't think it would be hard to add another meta field for the latest compatible version and if its miss matching with the flarum version, it wont show in bazaar.

They do, pretty much all of them only set a minimum compatibility, eg ^0.1.0-beta.7 not an upper, as pointed out before. I also explained how bazaar solves that.

Slluxx As soon as i enable flarum/flarum-ext-auth-facebook - which comes with the flarum installation - flarum stops working.

Flarum is in beta. The facebook extension, indeed, was broken and the logic refactored for beta 8. Try it, if it fails, don't use it. The reason it broke was due to facebook deprecating the bio field, there's a workaround discussed in the primary discussion about it here on the forums.

Slluxx I definitely will stick around. A few broken extensions cant stop me from using a great piece of software ?

As said before, thanks for speaking out. We value every voice, including those that respectfully out their frustrations.

I hope we, as the core team, are able to bring renewed pride and joy in using Flarum with the coming beta. We're doing our best to achieve that.