Howard Miller

It occurs to me that we do exactly this... but we use SAML, so that relies on a completely external (and non-trivial) authentication provider. It may be another way to look at the problem, however.

I've never heard of such a thing. I suspect you are creating a new auth plugin.

Well... no... the web version does check but it doesn't necessarily help. It relies on the information supplied by the plugin author, which is not always up to date. For example, if you are running Moodle 4.5, you can only install plugins that advertise themselves as having a version for Moodle 4.5. That doesn't mean that the 4.4 version won't work. This is especially relevant during an upgrade as the web update will suddenly ignore half of your optional plugins as it thinks there are no longer compatible versions. The practical reality is that you have to go and try them for yourself.

There's no magic - Moodle doesn't know that you have installed a plugin through the web interface. I tend to use the web interface to update plugins on my dev site and then commit the result to Git.

None of this saves you from the effort of checking plugins for a major update, unfortunately. Especially if you tend to update to the latest core version. Optional plugins are always behind the curve and need some manual intervention. We just build that into the upgrade planning.

Are you clear that Chris meant to open your browser developer tools (F12 usually) and select the 'Console' tab?