Okay, the README.md file points users to the wiki for upgrade advice. And the wiki *already* tells you that extracting the new code over the old code is not recommended because of these sorts of issues.
I've updated it make this even clearer, and I've added a section to the FAQ at the end, with the specific PHP error caused when you upgrade to 15.10 in this way: https://wiki.mahara.org/wiki/System_Administrator's_Guide/Upgrading_Mahara#Q:_PHP_Fatal_error:_Cannot_redeclare_get_message_thread_mr.28.29 -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Mahara Contributors, which is subscribed to Mahara. Matching subscriptions: Subscription for all Mahara Contributors -- please ask on #mahara-dev or mahara.org forum before editing or unsubscribing it! https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1519516 Title: Upgrade to 15.10 fails for sites that have upgraded Mahara by copying over their existing installation Status in Mahara: Fix Committed Status in Mahara 15.10 series: Won't Fix Status in Mahara 16.04 series: Won't Fix Bug description: I've now encountered two users on the support forums who had issues upgrading because they had copied over their existing Mahara site, and now have duplicate methods defined in the (old) multirecipient artefact plugin and the (new) multirecipient module plugin: https://mahara.org/interaction/forum/topic.php?id=7438&offset=0&limit=10#post29970 https://mahara.org/interaction/forum/topic.php?id=7444&offset=0&limit=10#post29986 This was caused because in Bug 1468156, we refactored this plugin from an artefact to a module. Apparently some users upgrade their sites through this process: 1. Download & unzip the new release 2. Copy the release into their existing Mahara webroot 3. When prompted, replace existing files in the webroot with new versions from the zip. The problem is this leaves the old files in place. Thus far, this approach has not caused any crashes, though I imagine it might lead to some strange behaviors, like possibly extra CSS files getting loaded, and the redundant ContactInfo block still being around. But the multirecipient module is perhaps the first case of us moving a library file from one location to another, and that results in the user having two library files that define some methods with the same name, and that causes a fatal PHP error. Since this has been common enough to come up twice in the forum, it would probably be a good idea to address it somehow. To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/mahara/+bug/1519516/+subscriptions _______________________________________________ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~mahara-contributors Post to : mahara-contributors@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~mahara-contributors More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
