Rollback Update Failure

plugin banner

Feature plugin for testing automatic rollback of a plugin or theme update failure.

Author:WP Core Contributors (profile at wordpress.org)
WordPress version required:6.3
WordPress version tested:6.5
Plugin version:7.2.0
Added to WordPress repository:11-02-2021
Last updated:11-03-2024
Rating, %:80
Rated by:4
Plugin URI:
Total downloads:316 410
Active installs:6 000+
plugin download
Click to start download

This is a feature plugin is for testing Rollback Auto-Update, aka Rollback part 3. This feature only protects plugins during the auto-update process.

As part of the normal Rollback process, the currently installed version of the plugin is moved to wp-content/upgrade-temp-backup/plugins. An active plugin is checked to ensure it doesn’t cause a PHP fatal error when visiting the site. An inactive plugin is not checked because it cannot cause your site to white screen.

Rollback parts 1 was merged into WordPress 6.2 as the move_dir(). Rollback part 2 was merged into WordPress 6.3 and protects the manual update process of plugins and themes.

Testing

  • Requires WordPress 6.3
  • This only works on auto-updates.
  • Run the following commands from the terminal. You might need to run the command several times to get it started:
    wp cron event run wp_version_check
  • When updating a plugin, you should be able to see the old plugin in the wp-content/upgrade-temp-backup/plugins/PLUGINNAME folder. The same should apply for themes. Since updates sometimes run fast and we may miss the folder creation during testing, you can simulate an update failure to demonstrate.
  • When a plugin auto-update fails, the previous version should be restored. To test that, change the version of a plugin to a previous number, run the update, and on fail the previous version (the one where you changed the version number) should still be installed on the site. To simulate an update failure and confirm this works, use the built-in Simulate failure link. Just activate/deactivate from the plugins.php page action link. This link will only be present if the plugin has an update pending.

Reporting

Please submit issues and PRs to GitHub.

Logo from a meme generator. Original artwork by Allie Brosh.


ChangeLog