[Bug]: SimpleWebFarmCachingProvider package no longer present in Install or Upgrade packages since v10.2.1

[dimarobert]

Is there an existing issue for this?

• I have searched the existing issues

What happened?

I was attempting an upgrade from DNN 9.13.7 to DNN 10.2.1 on an instance that has SimpleWebFarmCachingProvider enabled and I noticed that the synchronization stopped working. I looked through the PRs here and I noticed the change from SimpleWebFarmSync.aspx to SimpleWebFarmSync.axd in the manifest and I went to check my web.config and found out that it was not updated.
Long story short, I ended up finding that last DNN version that had /Install/Provider/DNN_SimpleWebFarmCachingProvider_{version}_Install.zip file in the Install or Upgrade packages was 10.2.0, and starting from 10.2.1 it is gone.

I looked through the release notes, PRs, and issues and I did not find any information that this package would no longer be part of the main installation package or anything like that.

Is this a bug or has the distribution of this package changed?

I've also not found any other way to download this package separately.

Steps to reproduce?

1. Start with a DNN instance < 10.2.1 with SimpleWebFarmCachingProvider enabled.
2. Upgrade to DNN 10.2.1+
3. SimpleWebFarmCachingProvider extension will not be installed/updated.

Current Behavior

No response

Expected Behavior

No response

Relevant log output

Anything else?

No response

Affected Versions

10.3.0 (latest release)

What browsers are you seeing the problem on?

No response

Code of Conduct

• I agree to follow this project's Code of Conduct

[dimarobert]

@bdukes Appears to have been broken by the migration to SDK project. The bin\Providers OutputPath got removed.
I've made a fix here:
develop...dimarobert:Dnn.Platform:fix-simple-web-farm-caching-provider-path

Looks like instead of failing the pipeline build, when a file (assembly?) referenced in the .dnn manifest is missing, the package is simply silently ignored/skipped. Should that be the behavior?

What would be the steps to fix/mitigate the DNN packages from 10.2.1 up to now 10.3.0? Looks like 10.2.1 is part of the upgrade path from 9.x in the docs. Should separate packages of DNN_SimpleWebFarmCachingProvider be built and added to the releases so that they can be installed/upgraded manually after the fact?

[bdukes]

@dimarobert thanks! It looks like the default behavior is to fail the build for a missing file, but the Package task wasn't being run at all (because a couple of steps got missed in the SDK-style project migration).

Thanks for tracking this down, it was a big help to have that head start.

Regarding updating previous releases, we recently adopted immutable releases, so it's not possible for us to add an additional package to the 10.3.0 release artifacts, but we could potentially do it for 10.2.1 through 10.2.3. In general, I'd prefer to just point people to 10.3.1, but it would be nice to have a stopgap until its ready.

[dimarobert]

@bdukes I think it would be a good idea even if only for 10.2.1 through 10.2.3, as there is no other way to get a hold of that package and install in existing installations. Even a simple link (to an artifact in Azure Pipelines?) in the message of the release could be enough if assets cannot be modified.
Otherwise instances that use the package would have to jump from 9.13.x directly to 10.3.1. Is that supported taking in consideration the new approach to the upgrade process? Or could 10.2.0 be considered a safe intermediate step in the upgrade path instead?