Clean up some redundant options from new blog setup, and remove legacy wp-hacks support

[solarissmoke]

In the process of updating some plugins for WP 3.0 I came across a few things that look like remnants of old WP versions that don't need to be there any more:

The following options are created during installation, but are redundant:

• gzipcompression (see #10365)

• advanced_edit (no idea what this was for)

• hack_file

With regard to hack_file - it's been deprecated since 1.5 and there is no longer an admin option for it - isn't it about time to remove it completely? See also #9551

Proposed patch to follow.

I expect that anything that might have been done with wp-hacks can now be done by dropping the file into the mu-plugins directory; so dropping support for it completely is probably fairly safe.

I'm thinking this can safely be done in 3.0.

Certainly the old options can be removed, even if anyone objects to removing wp-hacks.

I wouldn't object to removing it entirely as mu-plugins is a full replacement, but my-hacks still works. We removed the checkbox, but if the option is in the DB, the file gets included.

Since its autoloaded, we're not exactly doing a lot of work to keep support for it. Either way, we shouldn't be changing this so late in the dev cycle.

The others can go, that's not much of a problem. We'd need to add those to the array of options to delete on a schema upgrade.

Replying to nacin:

Since its autoloaded, we're not exactly doing a lot of work to keep support for it. Either way, we shouldn't be changing this so late in the dev cycle.

Okay.

The others can go, that's not much of a problem. We'd need to add those to the array of options to delete on a schema upgrade.

Does such an array already exist (I can't find it)? Or would it mean adding a statement to the upgrade_300() function?

Does such an array already exist (I can't find it)? Or would it mean adding a statement to the upgrade_300() function?

$unusedoptions in schema.php.

Replying to nacin:

$unusedoptions in schema.php.

Thanks :). Here's a patch that should clean up the two obsolete options (leaving hack_file for now).

Remove redundant gzipcompression and advanced_edit options

Remove legacy (WP 1.5) wp-hacks support and some redundant options - refreshed patch

Have refreshed the patch - hopefully this can make it into 3.1

Wow, talk about timing -- my comment just got rejected thanks to yours.

Not sure about wp-hacks... I'd love to remove it, I'll ask some of the other committers. The others are fine.

Want more lead time to deprecate that. Reconsider at start of 3.2

patch refreshed

Let’s do this in 3.6. I will refresh the patch if needed. :)

After searching through core with all options setup during populate_options(), I can confirm that there're no changes with v3.5. The options that should get deprecated (still) are gzipcompression, hack_file, advanced_edit. The only thing, that I can't confirm is the use_trackback-option, as I don't find any usage in core and I'm not sure if/how this would be used by a theme or plugin.

There are also options left from bookmarks.php, where I'm not sure if they shouldn't get moved to a filter callback that hooks into do_action('populate_options') (which is the hook at the beginning of populate_options()) and adds them on demand. List of bookmark related optinos: links_updated_date_format, links_recently_updated_prepend, links_recently_updated_append, links_recently_updated_time, default_link_category.