Activeadmin: ActiveAdmin 1.0.0 migration guide

[seanlinsley]

This is going to be the meta ticket for discussing the 1.0.0 release.

We need to 1) itemize all breaking changes in the changelog and 2) create an upgrade guide.

We should also consider whether there are things we can add (deprecation warnings, helpful exceptions) to make upgrading easier.

Open question: when upgrading your application to use master, what were the biggest pain points? How can we make it easier?

NOTE: please don't post things that already listed here and please don't make a discussion about off topics aka "When is the version 1.0 release expected?"

EDIT (@timoschilling), summary form the comments:

• [ ] rename f.buttons to f.actions (link to formtastic changenotes for this)
• [ ] default_actions -> actions
• [ ] strong_params
• [ ] metasearch -> ransack
  
  
  
  • This is maybe help full https://github.com/activerecord-hackery/ransack/#ransack-search-method
  
  
• [ ] form_buffers remove
• [ ] https://github.com/activeadmin/activeadmin/issues/3153#issuecomment-65485293
• [ ] Mongoid support
• [ ] Asset Pipline https://github.com/activeadmin/activeadmin/issues/3793#issuecomment-74645081

[jerhinesmith]

The biggest pain point for me was the change from metasearch to ransack -- mostly because I was using metasearch in other parts of the app, so I had to go through and update all of those instances.

All of the other stuff was fairly minor (i.e. f.buttons to f.actions, default_actions to actions, strong_params support, etc.)

[timoschilling]

@jerhinesmith f.buttons to f.actions is a formtastic change, not a active admin one.

[jerhinesmith]

You're absolutely right, but I still had to make the change when upgrading from 0.6x to 1.0pre (I'm not using formtastic anywhere else in the app).

[timoschilling]

@jerhinesmith thats right about formtastic, let us add a note. default_actions is self documented.

[fabn]

Issues encountered when upgrading an _application_ are (in order of priority):

• Metasearch to ransack migration
• strong_params
• Formtastic syntax changes
• Now, removal of form_buffers

However when dealing with plugins which rely on AA internals issues can arise on every change, latest issue was this

[taryneast]

While upgrading - I had a concern that I was adding to two activeadmin controllers. it had an included section (which just had a delegation and helper-method), and threw an exception telling me I was not allowed to have two included sections. There was no way around it but to remove the included section from the concern and duplicate it into the controllers that included that concern.

[seanlinsley]

https://github.com/justinfrench/formtastic/wiki/Upgrading-to-Formtastic-3.1

[seanlinsley]

I'm worried that the form builder rewrite introduced a lot of bugs and undocumented backwards incompatibilities. I'm going to work through the open form bug tickets to better understand the current state of the code.

[justin808]

@seanlinsley I'm doing a migration. I had to replace render active_admin_template(:edit) with render :edit

[gommo]

How is this (v1) coming along now?

[deivid-rodriguez]

Does this guide make any sense at this point? The latest (non pre-) release of activeadmin only supports a very old unsupported version of Rails (Rails 3). Almost every one is tracking master nowadays.

[jamie]

Definitely this guide makes sense. We're on a legacy Rails3 app working toward a Rails4 upgrade, and our options are either upgrade ActiveAdmin or replace it with something else. A concise guide covering the relevant changes is of huge value (and could probably be made a wiki page on the project).

[deivid-rodriguez]

I think it made sense at the time, now it doesn't. It does make sense that someone who still has to go through the trouble documents the process.

In any case, it's up to the maintainers to choose where they focus their efforts.

[varyonic]

We completed a substantial upgrade of our e-commerce back-end from Rails 3 w/ ActiveAdmin 0.6 to Rails 4 with ActiveAdmin 1.0 earlier this year The changes from 0.6 to 1.0 are significant, and we took the approach of switching to master as of Nov 2013 and then skipping down master in 60-90 day increments isolating and fixing breaking changes along the way. Needless to say good test coverage is key.

I listed the issues we encountered in the blog post, they included:

• replacing metasearch with Ransack
• Formtastic updates
• jquery-ui updates and their impact
• CSVBuilder changes, including streaming and column name changes
• default_actions replaced by actions
• changes to has_many forms CSS
• removal of form_buffers breaks partials inside form_for and other issues (my fault I’m sorry to say)

Migrating from Rails 3 to 4 has plenty of other minor challenges of its own, including strong parameters, ActiveRecord tweaks/deprecations and coordinating updates of other gems you may be depending on. I'm skeptical anyone is going to provide a more detailed guide at this point but I'll help if I can. Whatever its weaknesses AA provides value and I would not rush to replace it.

[jrochkind]

Are there currently maintainers of Activeadmin? Is a 1.0 release planned, or is it expected that everyone will just track master from here on out?

It makes it difficult to deal with old projects that may be a rails version or two behind, and need to be upgraded, to not have clear version releases of activeadmin for the past ~2 years.

[varyonic]

I published a summary of the commits we used on master before 1.0.0.pre1 with notes on each. YMMV, usual disclaimers apply.

[deivid-rodriguez]

What's the plan here? Latest two @varyonic's comments seem like a gold resource for people upgrading. Should they be put in an UPGRADE.md document?

There haven't been any comments here from any mantainers for more than one year but this is supposed to be blocking a 1.0 release... ¯_(⊙︿⊙)_/¯

[dmitry]

I'd like to help, but nobody from the maintainers are active anymore.

BTW https://github.com/activeadmin/activeadmin/issues/4677

[gommo]

Sad that AA has fallen so far. Wonder if we can get a new group of maintainers happening in '17

[dmitry]

@gommo I think we can do that by forking AA. First of all we need to understand who are :+1: for that. Then lets fork and start to work. :)
Main question: how to make that fork visible?

[joelmichael]

It's time for someone to fork this and release actual versions.

[varyonic]

I'm subscribed to the project and I see Timo responding frequently. Perhaps this should be discussed with him on Gitter or IRC?

[dmitry]

Why not to discuss such question here? It's a direct way, and probably the easiest way for the other parties to see how is it going.

[varyonic]

I created an Upgrading ActiveAdmin wiki page as suggested earlier, feel free to update or give feedback.

[joallard]

@timoschilling is there anything else besides #4173 blocking 1.0?

[timoschilling]

4173 is not a blocker!

I will make a new pre release in the next minutes.

And in the next days I will write something about comments like It's time for someone to fork this and release actual versions., #4677 and https://github.com/activeadmin/activeadmin/issues/3536#issuecomment-257637893

[deivid-rodriguez]

4173 is not a blocker!

Great, let's remove it from the 1.0.0 milestone then!

I will make a new pre release in the next minutes.

How many minutes (approx.)?

And in the next days I will write something about comments like It's time for someone to fork this and release actual versions., #4677 and #3536 (comment)

How many days (approx.)?

Finally, could you let us all know what's blocking a 1.0.0 release?

[deivid-rodriguez]

I was thinking that maybe you'll want to release a new version of inherited_resources first. Is that the case?

[dmitry]

Looks like should be updated or closed.

[deivid-rodriguez]

@varyonic is actively maintaining the upgrade guide in the wiki, so I think it's fine to close this, yes.

[joallard]

Approaching the 3 year anniversary of this ticket, can I just take a moment to congratulate the maintainers and contributors on releasing 1.0, we even have a 1.1! I thought this day would never come, so cheers (I am however very sorry for this notification-generating non-mission-critical comment.)

Bravo!