CustomerCentrix

When you have a few problems with a piece of software and there is an upgrade available, the natural inclination is to upgrade and hope that the problems disappear. I saw the announcement:

Posted By: Jason Nassi
Date: 2005-08-15 10:36
Summary: Sugar Open Source 3.5.0 Available for Download
Project: Sugar Open Source

So, it seemed like a good idea to go ahead with it. It didn't say Beta, but now I know that it probably should have. Not sure if this was a mistake or more likely just pushing to release and get an announcement out on a particular date whether ready or not. I had a little hesitation on this based on seeing the 3.0.1 release fairly soon after 3.0 - should have trusted instinct and waited.

They have a new automated upgrader, so I started with that. After uploading the code and setting permissions, I couldn't get it to find the new code base. Move on to manual upgrade instructions. Fairly simple instructions: update code base and html, update the data base, then upgrade the config file from the admin page after logon. Oops, can't logon because some piece of code says the database isn't version 3.5.0 yet. Look at the database upgrade code to verify that I didn't have some error even though I was pretty sure to see that the code executed without error - yep, all of the 3.0 >> 3.5 changes were applied. Apparently, there is some flag or code or something that should be in the db but wasn't upgraded with the SQL upgrade code. Search for the error message - no results. Search through the code for the error message - no results (dang WinXP upgrade prevents search from working as it used to). Manually dive into the code looking for database version info and find in sugar_version file a line that identifies the string "3.5.0" that needs to be inserted into the config table.

Change back to old configuration file, and now login works except for error message about configuration file needing repair. Limp over the the admin page and repair the configuration file. Now, the system appears to mostly work like it used to ... except for the Bug Tracker:

Error retrieving Bug list: Query Failed:SELECT bugs.* ,users.user_name as assigned_user_name, releases.id release_id, releases.name release_name FROM bugs LEFT JOIN releases ON bugs.release=releases.id LEFT JOIN users ON bugs.assigned_user_id=users.id where bugs.deleted=0 ORDER BY number asc LIMIT 0,20::MySQL error 1054: Unknown column 'number' in 'order clause'

Looks like there are some more things that should have been in the SQL upgrade code that didn't quite make it - back to the new sugar code. After searching for a WinXP fix that would restore the capabilities of searching all files, instead of just MS ones, I found some code in bug.php that contained some order by clauses. I spent a good bit of time looking for an obvious mismatch between the code and database, but it wasn't quite that simple. I guess that I have to give the folks who built this a little more credit. The bug was actually because the sort order is stored somewhere (not sure where at this point) allowing the user a nice persistent column sort. But changing a column name in this case breaks it. I fixed (or rather worked around it) by commenting out all of the order by clauses in bug.php that used variable (stored) values, leaving only the default hard-coded ones. Column sorting was temporarily disabled, then I could see the list and choose a different, current sort. Remove the comments and all is working.

A regular (non-geek) would have struggled with getting support. In hindsight, my time might have been better spent on other things and using paid support. It also might have taken just as long with me explaining, testing and waiting for a paid supporter to figure it out (or not). At least I get the satisfaction of killing this bug.