What's wrong with following the official upgrade procedure? Don't complain about missing tables or indices then.

The most important thing is that the software does not break and you can maneuver out of every bad situation. This is important for self-hosting.

I don't care if it's PHP. Many good things are written in PHP. I find Python and Ruby much worse for web applications. Not because of the language, but because it's hard to maneuver out of some situations.

That said I didn't have many problems with Nextcloud. The only thing I criticize is that it solves too many problems at once.

I'm not sure what gave you the impression I don't follow the official procedure, I do follow the official upgrade procedure, and always have through its many stupid iterations for the last 8 years.

Example error, from last week:

Devs did not test with NC instances created before v21.x, so the SQL db is broken when going through the official upgrade if your nc has the old structure and I had to manually modify the actual db to work.

This kind of shit happens about twice a year. Mind you, this exact literal thing happened from v18.x to 19.x also, you'd think they has learned their lesson.

And php itself is fine. Not the most secure way to build a webapp, but fine. However, upgrading PHP on various platforms is an exercise in pulling your hair out.

Nextcloud is great when it's working. Most upgrades are fine. But when it poops the bed, it's another hour I can't get back. No other self-hosted software in my stack is like that.

So you seriously expect an upgrade from major version 20 or less to major version 31 going well?

It's like upgrading from Windows 3.1 to Windows 11.

You misread that.

The database was from prior to 21.x, because i installed NC 8 years ago at v14 and have upgraded since then. I've been upgrading the same system since late 2016.

Stop picking fights with strangers.