2

What is the best way to remove an extension from Magento? I thought doing it via Magento Connect was the best way however the extension that I am trying to remove I do not see in my Magento connect area. Any ideas?

Christina Rule
  • 946
  • 3
  • 15
  • 29

1 Answers1

2

If you have the site under version control, take a look back to see what needs to be reverted. If not (and I'm assuming this is the case) then I would take a look into the packaged module and included installation instructions to find a list of files to remove etc. When you remove them, you will want to flush all caches afterwards. Also beware that in some cases removing a module can cause a site to break, a good example being where the module creates custom product attribute with custom attr models. If the database had alterations made by the module when it was installed, you'll want to determine whether or not those should be cleaned up or left around.

davidalger
  • 7,296
  • 1
  • 30
  • 47
  • Hi davidalger thanks for the response. I was afraid to remove all the files for that reason. How would I determine if the site would break if I did this? – Christina Rule Oct 24 '13 at 03:04
  • 1
    To determine if the site would break you should demo your change on the staging site. In many cases you only need to remove the module definition file from app/etc/modules to deactivate the module itself. Removing all of the files could be tedious if you don't have the code base under version control. – philwinkle Oct 24 '13 at 03:09
  • Philwinkle thanks for the response. I don't mind removing all the files, I just don't want to break anything. Is there an easy way to set up a staging site? – Christina Rule Oct 24 '13 at 03:30
  • So what I ended up doing was just deleting all the files I uploaded for that extension and then flushed the cache. All worked fine! Thank you for all the help! – Christina Rule Oct 24 '13 at 04:06
  • Removing the files does not remove the database entries the extension might have created. To see if the extension did add/change anything the scripts in the extension's sql folder should be examined. – Kristof at Fooman Oct 24 '13 at 04:45
  • @Fooman, if an extension added a column to a table, this column would not go away regardless of the extension uninstallation method used. Is this correct? For example, I think one of the onepage checkout extensions adds a comment column to the order table. – laketuna Oct 24 '13 at 21:31
  • @laketuna correct no uninstallation happens for the database - you would need to read the files in the sql folder and then manually reverse it if required/desired. There is https://github.com/magento-hackathon/MageTrashApp but not many extensions support it yet. – Kristof at Fooman Oct 24 '13 at 21:34