Support

Akeeba Backup for Joomla!

#30384 Still some questions about the FOF and FOF30 libraries

Posted in ‘Akeeba Backup for Joomla! 4 & 5’
This is a public ticket

Everybody will be able to see its contents. Do not include usernames, passwords or any other sensitive information.

Environment Information

Joomla! version
n/a
PHP version
n/a
Akeeba Backup version
n/a

Latest post by jjst135 on Monday, 22 October 2018 03:11 CDT

Friday, 19 October 2018 03:54 CDT

jjst135
Hi!

Is still have some questions about the FOF library if I may. You have explained a lot to me in this ticket:

https://www.akeebabackup.com/support/admin-tools/Ticket/30022-fof30-2-2.html

I am trying to clean up our site by removeing the old F-zer-F libraries where possible. But looking at the (unistallable) Joomla FOF library I notice that it say it is version:

FOF | 2.4.3 | 2015-04-22 13:15:32 | Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos / Akeeba Ltd

Is this the correct and most recent version? When I cehck the version.txt in de libraries/fof folder it says:

2.5.5
2016-08-19

So there is a difference in these dates. Do I need to worry about having the most recent version of this FOF library? Will it just update whenever Joomla is updated if there is a newer version?

But the version number will stay the same in the Joomla Extension manager?

A second question, about the FOF30 library. On som sites my extension manager shows two versions installed with the same version number. Not sure why, but when I uninstall one, the FOF30 library is gone and I need to reïnstall it. Is there anorher way to remove the on of the items in the extension manager? Maybe in the database somewhere?

Kind regards,
Jip

Friday, 19 October 2018 04:36 CDT

jjst135
Screenhost: https://inxpactdrive.nl/s/vkduaw7ZnfjuTxJ

Monday, 22 October 2018 02:39 CDT

nicholas
DO NOT uninstall FOF 2.x that's shipped with Joomla!. It's impossible to uninstall for a reason. It's part of Joomla! and some Joomla! features (post-installation messages and Two Factor Authentication) require it. The version reporting problems are due to Joomla! itself. It only updates that information when it is first installed. Subsequent updates do not modify that information, resulting in misleading versions being reported. However, Joomla is not my software and any attempts I've made in fixing it were met with hostility so I won't even bother. Besides, we have terminated our support for FOF 2.x in 2016.

Regarding FOF30 (FOF 3.x, the current stable branch) being reported twice, that's because of a bug in the Joomla! extensions installer. We have always used the same name tag for FOF 3.x. Apparently at some point Joomla! screwed up and created a new database entry in the #__extensions table for the same extension. Since both records point to the same extension, with the same name, therefore the same folder on your site if you try to uninstall either you will break your site. There's nothing you can do because of the way #__extensions is linked to #__assets which is a tree. You can't just remove a record, it would break the #__assets table which in turn would break your site.

So, basically, all of your issues are irrelevant to our software and are caused by Joomla! bugs. Unfortunately, Joomla! is third party software and we cannot provide fixes for it. In fact, if we tried to fix Joomla! in one of our releases that would be a "core hack" which would cause our software to be banned from the Joomla! Extensions Directory. Using our own installer code to avoid the problems caused by Joomla! bugs would also cause our software to be banned from the Joomla! Extensions Directory. So here we are, being forced to live with Joomla's bugs. As I said, over the years I've tried submitting bug fixes but I was met with hostility by people who both lack the technical acumen and real world Joomla! experience to understand the problem and also have the political clout to block integration of the bug fixes. Spending 20' to find and fix a bug and 14 hours trying to convince people that yeah, it's really a bug and yeah, that's how you fix it is a bad use of our time and makes no business sense. So we just try to work around Joomla! bugs when we have to and ignore the ones which are simply annoying but not break anything, like these double records in the database. What can you do...

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

Monday, 22 October 2018 03:11 CDT

jjst135
Hi Nicholas,

I agree my issue is not that big a deal. It does not break anything as you said. But I am glad I now understand why the version number is that old. Also I will just ignore the double (equal) records about the FOF30 library.

Sorry to hear you ran into so much resistance from the Joomla people. You would hope that someone that fixes issues would be made to feel welcome.

Anyway, thanks for explaining. I did help me understand why/what happened / happens with these libraries.

Kind regards,
Jip

Support Information

Working hours: We are open Monday to Friday, 9am to 7pm Cyprus timezone (EET / EEST). Support is provided by the same developers writing the software, all of which live in Europe. You can still file tickets outside of our working hours, but we cannot respond to them until we're back at the office.

Support policy: We would like to kindly inform you that when using our support you have already agreed to the Support Policy which is part of our Terms of Service. Thank you for your understanding and for helping us help you!