Is it safe to uninstall the Help Application?

Hi,

I’d like to uninstall the Help application but I’d like to check that it’s safe to delete all of the associated documents/pages. In particular, it’s the ones under the XWiki space that worried me slightly :slight_smile: I’m assuming the ones under the Help space are just the help pages themselves and are safe to delete.

Screenshot 2022-06-14 at 16.35.09

Thanks in advance,
Alex

They are fine to be removed. You might get a broken link in wiki edit mode for the syntax help (which would be a small bug since we should check if the doc exist and if not don’t put the link).

Great, thank you for the confirmation @vmassol.

Cheers

ok I’ve checked and you’ll need to remove this panel (“XWiki Syntax Help”): xwiki-platform/SyntaxHelp.xml at 053f0a2757cea18a5916632a58c6046ba61954cd · xwiki/xwiki-platform · GitHub

I think we should move this panel to the Help Application actually.

Note that there would still be the issue that it’s a panel displayed by default: xwiki-platform/editpanelsvars.vm at bd419a583691c1156a38e44022781ae876932da0 · xwiki/xwiki-platform · GitHub

Ideally we would need a way that the Help app would inject it in the list of default edit panels.

Would be nice to have a JIRA for this :wink: If you have the courage to create one.

Of course, no problem. I’m using 13.10.5, do you want me to set the affects version to that or something else?

Would an issue of type Task to move the panel you mention into the Help Application be ok? I’ll copy in the information you’ve provided here. I’ll paste a link to the issue back in here once I’ve created it.

I’ve created [XWIKI-19836] Move XWiki Syntax Help panel into Help Application - XWiki.org JIRA. Hopefully I’ve correctly transposed the intent into the issue. I set the affects version set to 13.10.5, just in case. I set the Priority to Minor, just in case you want to change it.

sure sounds good

I’d use “improvement” or “bug”.

looks good, thanks! A screenshot of the broken link would help but it’s fine.

No problem, I’ll get one now.

Note that XWiki.XWikiSyntaxClass can also be removed.

1 Like

I’ve added a screenshot. Hopefully it’s the one you were looking for :slight_smile:

Almost… the link is not broken… are you sure you’ve removed the Help application? :slight_smile: The idea was to show the problem in the jira issue.

Ah yeah, sorry. I had removed the Help Application but my node become unresponsive which appears to have left it in a middle state where from the Extension Managers PoV the extension is no longer installed but the content is still present.

The reason it became unresponsive was that I have an Event Listener extension deployed and for some reason, if it logs the onEvent parameters (or something after that; I haven’t yet tracked down the exact cause) it throws an An illegal reflective access operation has occurred

2022-06-14 16:30:47,183 [extension/wiki:xwiki job group daemon thread - org.xwiki.extension.job.internal.UninstallJob@59ba2cfa([extension, action, org.xwiki.platform:xwiki-platform-help-ui, wiki:xwiki])] TRACE c.c.x.f.e.DeleteEventListener  - onEvent(org.xwiki.bridge.event.DocumentDeletedEvent@fcfff904, Help.TipsPanel.WebHome, {user=XWiki.admin, originalWiki=xwiki, wiki=xwiki, userreference=xwiki:XWiki.admin, mainxwiki=xwiki, doc=Main.WebHome}) :: ENTRY
WARNING: An illegal reflective access operation has occurred
WARNING: Illegal reflective access by com.thoughtworks.xstream.core.util.SerializationMembers (file:/usr/local/tomcat/webapps/kb/WEB-INF/lib/xstream-1.4.17.jar) to method javax.management.ObjectName.readObject(java.io.ObjectInputStream)
WARNING: Please consider reporting this to the maintainers of com.thoughtworks.xstream.core.util.SerializationMembers
WARNING: Use --illegal-access=warn to enable warnings of further illegal reflective access operations
WARNING: All illegal access operations will be denied in a future release

I’ll turn off logging and see if I can successfully uninstall the Help Application.

I’ve turned off logging and successfully uninstalled the Help Application; however, the Syntax link is always going to “http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Documentation/UserGuide/Features/XWikiSyntax/?xpage=print” instead of a local page but I’m not sure why. I guess I’m not exactly sure what the following code does in regards to isNew if the XWiki.XWikiSyntax page has been deleted.

#set ($syntaxDoc = $xwiki.getDocument('XWiki.XWikiSyntax'))
#if ($syntaxDoc.isNew())

Ah this is cool, I should have checked yesterday. So we already support uninstalling the Help app cleanly and the “XWiki syntax help” panel will work even if the Help app is uninstalled :slight_smile:

Ok, great :slight_smile: Is there anything you want me to do with the Jira Issue I raised?