Health Check Error: Bad vardefs subfields

Overview

The Health Check wizard must be run when upgrading to evaluate whether your instance is suitable for upgrade. During the health check, various types of issues may be detected which can affect your ability to upgrade. This article will cover the "Bad vardefs subfields" error reported by the health check.

Symptoms

This error generates an output similar to the following in health check:

Resolution

In this example, the vardef identified in the health check error is for a customization that has been added to the stock module code in the ./modules/Accounts/vardefs.php file.

In this file, the array that is triggering the error is contained in:

$dictionary['Account'] = array(
  'fields' => array(
  ),
);

The fields array within the test_field array is causing the error because the definition of that subfield does not match an existing field in the instance:

'test_field' => array(
   'name' => 'test_field',
   'type' => 'int',
   'fields' => array(
       'fake',
   ),
),

Since the subfield is incompatible with the upgrade target version, Sugar will remove the fields and subfield arrays from this file during the upgrade. For our example, both the field and the subfield do not exist, so they will be deleted during the upgrade.

Note: If the subfield is within a valid field, then only the subfield will be deleted during the upgrade.