Ability to skip max-version check in core for testing beta apps

[PVince81]

Use case

To make sure that an app will work correctly OC version X+1, QA needs to test it while the app is still in beta phase and not yet market as compatible with the latest X+1.

Problem

When testing a beta app or PR that still has max-version=X instead of max-version X+1, the X+1 version of OC will refuse to enable the app.
So a QA person would need to manually hack info.xml to increase the version temporarily just to make tests run.
In a CI environment this hack would need to be automated.

Proposed solution

Introduce a new environment variable CI_IGNORE_APP_VERSION_REQUIREMENTS=1 which will skip any min/max version checks when enabling or installing apps.

Open questions

• should this also apply to the market app or only enabling an already installed app ?

@owncloud/qa

[patrickjahns]

The other idea was to introduce a (hidden) config option.

There are pro's con's to both approaches
Environment:

• needs more documentation / clarification for people to be aware of ("why is this working in ci but not here"

Config option

• more prone to abuse by people who see it

Regarding the naming" CI_IGNORE_APP_VERSION_REQUIREMENTS - I would drop CI at least - as this is not only relevant for CI, but also for setting up test environments

Generally speaking, a major use-case is, when already setting up testing for master branches - which would have a version number higher than anything we currently release.
We want to know early on if that app will work with master or the next release - but not bump the max/min version requirements yet

[ownclouders]

GitMate.io thinks possibly related issues are #22485 (test), #22492 (test), #29824 (skip tests tagged with the current oC version), #30437 (skip moving test on Firefox), and #4146 (Fix skipped encryption app test).

[jvillafanez]

more prone to abuse by people who see it

We have to assume that people WILL abuse it.
For this particular case, I think it's quite harmless on our side as it won't enable anything new or something that shouldn't be accessible. It's more like a "do it on your own risk". Assuming that people will use this option, I'd like to easily know if this option is active or not, so when a report comes we can double check the app versions.

[PVince81]

To reduce the probability of abuse I suggest to use an env variable which is more tricky to setup for a server + CLI, while setting a config.php option is too easy.

[patrickjahns]

MYSECRETVAR=true php occ - not that hard though ;-)

[PVince81]

@DeepDiver1975 any objection to using this approach for beta testing ?

[PVince81]

Alternative that we're going to try:

• if OC channel is either "git" or "daily", we skip max-version check in core

Doesn't require adding or removing flags in various apps.