I’ve been waiting on doing an upgrade to an instance of Nextcloud because there is not compatible version of External User Authentication released for Nextcloud 28. It looks like the fix has been applied and it was as simple as someone bumping up the max-version in the info.xml file. From what I understand and from what I can see that change hasn’t been released so my instance can’t be upgraded.
Can anyone help me figure out what needs to be done or who needs to be contacted to get this released? The big problem with this falling behind official releases is that it is a very useful app and it is also listed in the official documentation.
I’d hate for someone to decide that it should no longer be listed in the official docs because it isn’t getting updated along with the main releases. My hope is that the other side of the issue gets solved and it stays up to date.
Came to the forum to write this exact post so thanks for trying to get some attention here. With only 32 days to go for the release of Nextcloud 29 compatibility with that next version should also be on Nextclouds agenda IMHO.
It is a really good feature to have as I’m able to allow authentication against my Samba4 domain controller and users don’t have to maintain different passwords for the two systems. And like I stated before, it’s in the documentation so it makes sense to update it with the core system.
Is there an answer to this question or any kind of official response on this? It seems absurd that something as useful, important and officially documented as external_authentication could go this far into a Nextcloud release and not get an update.
How do we get the attention of someone who can answer this?
I’m incredibly grateful for the hard work that people put into Nextcloud and I have a very high level of respect for everyone involved, but to have something like this not even getting a response is…let’s just say not good.
What is the proper way to bring attention to this?
Have you tried force enabling the app to see if there are any problems with running it as-is?
AFAIK user_external is a community maintained app. You’re welcome to submit a PR that updates the version requirement in the info.xml to push things along. (If that appears to be all that’s needed; I do not know since I don’t use this app).
It’s not an officially supported app[1]. Though admittedly this one is a little weird because it has some history from the OC days I guess.
If the app is important to you:
help out by testing it with v29 (as-is, by enabling it as an untested app in your environment or a test environment) and then reporting back about how well it functions (i.e. in the open “adding v29 support” Issue)
submit a PR to fix anything necessary for v29 support
test any v29 support PRs that get opened
help out with other unrelated open issues in the repository (i.e. fellow users that need support or reproducing bug reports) to free up maintainer time
This is the only way things move forward. The maintainers are volunteers gifting the app to you.
Any help you can give them makes things move faster and improves the app.
Things will inescapably vary depending on maintainer own workloads, lives, priorities, and interests.
Also depending on who steps up to help out the primary maintainers.
And if you’re relying on it in a commercial setting, you may want to support the maintainers in some other capacity (but I’m just speaking generically; I have no idea the real needs in this app since I’m not a user of it myself).
Completely agree on all other points; already very grateful this app exists. I already contacted the developer last year to see if I can help him in any possible way.
No disrespect to the devs and all appreciation of their donated time. Realizing it is not an officially supported app I think that needs to be reflected somewhere in the official docs because it is a feature that is very useful and I think wanted. Having it in the official docs gives the impression that it is available and ready for use. Maybe some of this functionality could go into core somewhere?
Here’s a question you can answer though. The PR was made and the changes were done but from what I can tell we aren’t able to make those changes ourselves in our instances because the code needs signed? My instance gave an error when I tried to manually update my local copies of the files.
The next problem is that it took SO MUCH BLOODY TIME to finally get any kind of a response on this. Again, all respect to everyone involved paid or volunteer and I understand how things can go but it is tough when responses on things aren’t being offered through any channels. What can be done for this?
I find it interesting that I’m getting little to no engagement from anyone on the forums that works on the nextcloud software or overseas any aspect of the nextcloud forums.
I’m being direct in my responses but I don’t feel I’m being rude. I’m not the only one running into this issue with this app and I think an overall resolution would be good for anyone using Nextcloud. What is the appropriate way to deal with this problem? As stated above we are now in NC Hub 29 land and no external auth support for it. How, as a community member, can someone make this situation better?
On github we have a response that addresses this issue pretty directly. Since github is more dev-oriented and not always user friendly and user facing (even sys admin friendly sometimes) I’m linking a response from there to this thread:
It also looks as though external_auth will be removed from docs, which makes sense if it isn’t going to be able to be updated in parallel with Nextcloud.
It would be ideal if we could find a way to help with this. I’ll look into seeing what it would take to help test releases myself but I personally only currently use the SMB portion of this.