OJS 3.4: what does "Plugin already installed, and is newer than the version available in the gallery" mean? How to work around it?

Software Support
1

In OJS 3.4, plugins will often show “Can be upgraded” in the Plugin Gallery. When I try to upgrade, I get an error saying “Plugin already installed, and is newer than the version available in the gallery.” The plugin doesn’t update and doesn’t show up in the Installed Plugins list.

In the most recent case, I’m running OJS 3.4.0.5 (the journal was initially built in 3.4.0.3). I have previously installed the Matomo version plugin but I can no longer access which version is installed because it no longer appears in the Installed Plugins list. Matomo stopped collecting data the week of February 26 to March 3, 2024 (which really sucks for the journal editors’ reporting requirements). We upgraded to 3.4.0.5 on February 29, perhaps that instigated the issue.

The Plugin Gallery shows that Matomo can be upgraded to v1.0.5.0 ( v1.0.5.0 released on 2023-04-11, Matomo/Piwik release for OJS/OMP 3.4.0). Clicking Upgrade results in the error described in the first paragraph. I should also note that the plugin releases in GitHub show that v1.0.5.0 is the most recent version for the plugin.

I was able to replicate the same error trying to upgrade the following previously installed plugins in the same journal:

  • COinS
  • Custom Header
  • JATS Template
  • OAI JATS
  • Classic
  • Health Sciences
  • Manuscript (Default child theme)
  • Immersion
  • Default Translation
  • Control Public Files
  • Text Editor Extras
  • Pragma
  • DOI in Summary

However, I was just successfully able to upgrade the following previously installed plugins in the same journal:

  • QuickSubmit
  • Material Theme

So it seems to me the problem is widespread among plugins but not universal for all of them.

Could you please advise on how to address this going forward?

2

Also, a plot-twist that may or may not be related: trying to upgrade the Bootstrap3 plugin at the same time as the others returned the error message Plugin "bootstrap3" could not be deleted from the file system. This may be a permissions problem. Please make sure that the web server is able to write to the plugins directory (including subdirectories) but don't forget to secure it again later.

3

Update: we’re continuing to troubleshoot and it appears that our upgrade to 3.4.0.5 made a bunch of plugins appear with the “Can be upgraded” option in the Plugin Gallery when in reality there was no newer version available. We made did a batch operation (adapted from our batch script for 3.3, used many times without error) to upgrade all those plugins, and all of those are the ones that show the "“Plugin already installed, and is newer than the version available in the gallery” error.

We’re still gathering information but the question might actually be: why did the plugin gallery show that a bunch of plugins with no upgrades appear to be upgradable when we went to 3.4.0.5? If that’s the case, I’ll create a new ticket.