Make cron entry scheduling editable

[Lukas W.]

Having a number of fields of cron entries non-editable surely serves its purpose, but I think the run schedule should be editable. There are certain situations where one wants cron entries to run more or less often and tune the performance or reactiveness of the board.

 

[Xon]

XF1 allowed a fair amount of editing of cron entries

 

[Frode789]

Yes this has annoyed me quite a bit.. Liking this.

 

[Chris D]

XF1 allowed a fair amount of editing of cron entries

Which were wiped after every upgrade...

 

[Lukas W.]

Which were wiped after every upgrade...

Might be worth considering some kind of user-controlled override. The additional database fields shouldn't hurt anyone.

 

[sbj]

Can't we edit the cron entries in debug mode?

But we can copy any cron entry (the callbacks) and put the same cron entry. What is the logic behind this? Why not letting us editting it directly?

 

[Lukas W.]

But we can copy any cron entry (the callbacks) and put the same cron entry. What is the logic behind this? Why not letting us editting it directly?

@Chris D mentioned the problem. When you update a mod with a cron entry and you've manually (as a user) altered that cron entry, all changes you made are overridden by the update. What would be necessary is some kind of mechanism that allows the user to make changes to the schedule, but keep the original schedule intact, so it can be altered by the mod and the user can restore the original schedule if he likes to. Additionally a mechanism to inform the user that the schedule has been altered would also be somewhat helpful.

 

[AndyB]

If I recall correctly, the argument from XenForo is that you don't want admins making adjustments to XenForo Cron Entries as that could cause problems, this makes sense. So my question would be, why not allow editing of Cron Entries to third party add-ons only and make it so those changes are kept even if the add-on is upgraded.

 

[sbj]

@Chris D mentioned the problem. When you update a mod with a cron entry and you've manually (as a user) altered that cron entry, all changes you made are overridden by the update. What would be necessary is some kind of mechanism that allows the user to make changes to the schedule, but keep the original schedule intact, so it can be altered by the mod and the user can restore the original schedule if he likes to. Additionally a mechanism to inform the user that the schedule has been altered would also be somewhat helpful.

Why would the mod change/update the cron which I altered specifically? Why this power?
And why can' we revert almost anything, like style option changes to the default, but can't have the same mechanism for crons?
Why am I forced to use the cron entries set from XenForo?
And if XF doesn't want us to alter cron entries, why can I create the same cron entry with a callback?
I'm not a developer but this makes no sense to me, no offence intended.

 

[Chris D]

You’ve touched on the few content types that are editable there but there’s many more that aren’t editable.

Any that are editable have a versioning system that allows it which is not an insignificant piece of work.

It’s not that we don’t want you to edit them. All we’ve done in 2.0 is prevent them from being editable because there’s very clearly an impression that those changes stick, when they won’t.

So we won’t be allowing editing of them for that reason but the concept of having a system to allow them to be editable is a valid suggestion and one we could consider in the future.

 

[Snog]

There are very valid reasons for some cron tasks not to be editable by the end user. There are at least two of my add-ons that are time dependent and the end result would be very different if the schedule was changed.

One is tied to the release of data by a third party and updates are needed near that time. If the task day is changed that could put updates out of sync by a month.

The other must run at midnight each day. If it doesn't, then it's calculations will be incorrect and people would be wondering why they are wrong.

So it there is any consideration of an editable system, then there should be an option to make them uneditable by the developer.

 

[Lukas W.]

The other must run at midnight each day. If it doesn't, then it's calculations will be incorrect and people would be wondering why they are wrong.

So it there is any consideration of an editable system, then there should be an option to make them uneditable by the developer.

Or you could go with a clear "DO NOT DO THAT" indication and hope for the best.

 

[Snog]

Or you could go with a clear "DO NOT DO THAT" indication and hope for the best.

That would work almost as well as a README.txt file.

 

[djbaxter]

That would work almost as well as a README.txt file.

That would actually work a lot better than a readme file because it would be a notice on the settings page.