0016849: Drop FTP support - MantisBT - Signup temporarily disabled due to spam

ID	Project	Category	View Status	Date Submitted	Last Update

0016849	mantisbt	attachments	public	2014-01-18 21:50	2014-12-08 00:34

Reporter	vboctor	Assigned To	vboctor
Priority	normal	Severity	minor	Reproducibility	have not tried
Status	closed	Resolution	fixed
Product Version	1.2.16
Target Version	1.3.0-beta.1	Fixed in Version	1.3.0-beta.1

Summary	0016849: Drop FTP support
Description	FTP feature was designed to achieve two goals: backup attachments act as a cache on the webserver, when space on web hosting was limited. I believe we should propose this feature since there is no reason to add complexity to backup a subset of the data (attachments) and because reason 2 above is no longer an issue. Also, all hosting plans come with backups. If not, then use of products like tarsnap.com or something similar can get the job done. The suggestion is to drop this feature from 1.3.x.
Tags	No tags attached.

atrol 2014-01-19 08:39 developer ~0039084	I don't use FTP in any of my installations. There are also hardly any users in forum asking for it. But there are (active?) users using FTP. We could ask users via email lists, forum, blog and survey to get a rough impression how many users are using this feature. If no one responds we could risk to just drop FTP support. In other cases we would have to offer instructions and/or tools to migrate from FTP to DISK or DATABASE.

vboctor 2014-01-19 14:13 manager ~0039088	FTP was implemented as a redundant copy of DISK. Hence, if we just disable FTP, users will continue to have all attachments on DISK. So upgrading and replacing the FTP setting with DISK, will provide transparent experience. FTP provided the ability to save another copy of attachments on a remote FTP server. This means save to FTP when an attachment is added, and delete from FTP when it is deleted. However, it wasn't used to serve attachments. There were always be some users that use incomplete or features that we would like to deprecate/remove. We should make sure they have a decent way out of these features, rather than support for ever in a broken state. Here is a good example: https://basecamp.com/breeze

atrol 2014-01-19 14:49 developer ~0039091	I wasn't aware that it's just a redundant copy of DISK. It's not documented in my favorite MantisBT configuration documentation (config_defaults_inc.php) and I was too lazy to check the source code. After believing your description and checking the source ;-) +1 to drop it

dregad 2014-01-19 18:00 developer ~0039095	I'm fine with dropping it. In fact, it will make file attachments handling easier in the code - this FTP made a bit of a mess of things IMO.

rombert 2014-01-20 05:33 reporter ~0039104	+1 for dropping FTP support for attachments.

vboctor 2014-01-21 09:59 manager ~0039113	Reminder sent to: grangeway @grangeway, what do you think?

MantisBT: master 65965bbf 2014-01-27 05:22 vboctor Details Diff	Fixes 0016849: Drop FTP support.		Affected Issues 0016849
	mod - api/soap/mc_file_api.php		Diff File
	mod - config_defaults_inc.php		Diff File
	mod - core/bug_api.php		Diff File
	mod - core/config_api.php		Diff File
	mod - core/constant_inc.php		Diff File
	mod - core/file_api.php		Diff File
	mod - core/obsolete.php		Diff File
	mod - core/print_api.php		Diff File
	mod - docbook/Admin_Guide/en-US/Configuration.xml		Diff File
	mod - docbook/Admin_Guide/en-US/Page_Descriptions.xml		Diff File
	mod - file_download.php		Diff File
	mod - lang/strings_english.txt		Diff File
	mod - proj_doc_update.php		Diff File