CiviCRM upgrade oddities: kooky extra steps

Upgrading CiviCRM can, sometimes, require some unusual and very technical extra steps.

Why is this an upgrade oddity?

These extra steps are often quite technical in nature, such as performing SQL queries directly in MySQL, editing of PHP files, or other tasks typically handled by a developer.

Non-technical site administrators are not likely to be comfortable with these changes.

But you probbaly won’t even be aware of them until you're in the middle of an upgrade — which can leave you felling a little "stuck".

Are these really so hard to handle?

Depends on your skills, but yes they can be. For example, messages in recent CiviCRM upgrades have included instructions like these:

ACTION REQUIRED: You will need to apply a manual update because your civicrm_activity table is large and the update will run slowly. Please read about how to apply this update manually (linked article inludes specific SQL queries to run in the CivCRM MySQL database).

Your civicrm.settings.php file contains a line to set the php variable `auto_detect_line_endings`. It is deprecated and the line should be removed from the file.

When loading extensions, CiviCRM searches the filesystem. In v5.56+, the default search is more constrained. This improves performance, but some extensions ([insert list here]) will become invisible. To make these visible, you should either move the source-code or edit civicrm.settings.php. For example, you may add this line [insert some PHP code for you to edit into the named file].

Would you be 100% confident taking those steps?

How can you deal with this oddity?

You'll see these messages during the in-browser "Upgrade the database" step of the upgrade process, either at the very beginning or the very end (and sometimes both).

If you don't understand any of the messages, or don't feel confident following the instructions, here's what to do:

Revert to your pre-upgrade backup, and contact your CiviCRM coach or another CiviCRM specialist.

You really can't just ignore these messages?

No, don't even try.

These extra instructions are there for a reason. Ignoring them could leave your system in a broken state — even if it appears to be working properly.

That means you could be moving forward with a CRM that has real problems under the hood, which could be all-but-impossible to resolve later.

No fun. So be careful.

So there you have it. One more reason to be sure you've got good backups before you begin your CiviCRM upgrade.

All the best,
A.