Audience: Redmine administrators Published: September 2026 Applies to: all RedmineUP plugins released in the August–September 2026 wave
- What changed
- Required versions
- Minimum supported plugin versions
- Can I mix old and new versions?
- Recommended update order
- How to check your versions
- Technical appendix
What changed
The latest wave of RedmineUP releases introduces two important internal changes:
- Unified plugin architecture. All RedmineUP plugins now integrate with the Redmine core and with each other in the same way — internally, patch loading was switched from include to prepend, a more modern approach. Everything keeps working as before, now even more reliably and predictably.
- Tag autocomplete moved into the redmineup gem. The shared tag autocomplete (auto_complete_taggable_tags, used by tags fields in Contacts, People, Products, Drive and other plugins) now lives in the redmineup gem itself instead of individual plugins.
Because of these changes, plugins from the new generation must be used together with the new generation of redmine_contacts and the latest redmineup gem. Mixing old and new plugin versions is not guaranteed to work — see below.
Required versions
Rule 1 — redmine_contacts 4.5.0 or later
The following plugins depend on redmine_contacts and require redmine_contacts 4.5.0 or later:
| Plugin | Minimal plugin version | Minimal redmine_contacts |
|---|---|---|
| Redmine Products | 2.3.0+ | 4.5.0 |
| Redmine Helpdesk | 4.3.0+ | 4.5.0 |
| Redmine Invoices | 4.3.0+ | 4.5.0 |
| Redmine Finance | 2.2.0+ | 4.5.0 |
| RedmineUP Mailchimp | 1.1.0+ | 4.5.0 |
Earlier CRM versions (4.4.7 and below) belong to the older generation and are not supported together with the plugins listed above.
Note: the upcoming plugin releases enforce this requirement automatically (the check is written in each plugin's init.rb). Until then, follow this article and keep CRM up to date manually.
Rule 2 — redmineup gem 1.1.13 or later
All RedmineUP plugins of the new generation require the redmineup gem 1.1.13 or later (it includes the shared tag autocomplete and the compatibility changes of the new generation):
bundle update redmineup
Minimum supported plugin versions
Update every RedmineUP plugin you use to at least the version listed below — older versions belong to the previous generation:
| Plugin | Minimum version (new generation) | Last version of the old generation |
|---|---|---|
| Redmine CRM (contacts) | 4.5.0 | 4.4.7 |
| Redmine Helpdesk | 4.3.0 | 4.2.10 |
| Redmine Invoices | 4.3.0 | 4.2.16 |
| Redmine Products | 2.3.0 | 2.2.9 |
| Redmine Finance | 2.2.0 | 2.1.13 |
| Redmine People | 1.7.0 | 1.6.13 |
| Redmine Agile | 1.7.0 | 1.6.14 |
| Redmine Checklists | 4.1.0 | 4.0.3 |
| Redmine Drive | 1.3.0 | 1.2.6 |
| Redmine Budgets | 1.1.0 | 1.0.9 |
| Redmine Questions | 1.1.0 | 1.0.10 |
| Redmine Reporter | 2.1.0 | 2.0.6 |
| Redmine Resources | 2.1.0 | 2.0.9 |
| Redmine Zenedit | 3.1.0 | 3.0.2 |
| RedmineUP Tags | 2.2.0 | 2.2.0 |
| RedmineUP CMS | 1.3.0 | 1.2.8 |
| RedmineUP Favorite Projects | 2.2.0 | 2.1.6 |
| RedmineUP Mailchimp | 1.1.0 | 1.1.0 |
Can I mix old and new versions?
Mixing old and new plugin versions in one installation is not guaranteed to work correctly. Many combinations will run fine, but the number of possible combinations is too large to test them all, and some are known to conflict — for example, when two plugins extend the same part of Redmine. In such cases:
- features of the old plugins (tabs, filters, autocomplete) may silently stop working;
- Redmine may fail to start, e.g. with Invalid route name, already in use: 'auto_complete_taggable_tags' or a message requiring a newer gem / CRM version.
Recommendation: update all RedmineUP plugins you use to at least the versions from the table above, and the redmineup gem to 1.1.13+. Technical details are described in the appendix below.
Recommended update order
# 1. Update the redmineup gem to the latest version bundle update redmineup # 2. Replace plugin files in plugins/ (or vendor/plugins) with new versions: # - redmine_contacts FIRST # - then all dependent plugins (products, helpdesk, invoices, finance, mailchimp) # - then the rest (people, agile, checklists, drive, ...) # 3. Install gems and run migrations bundle install bundle exec rake redmine:plugins:migrate RAILS_ENV=production # 4. Restart Redmine
Update CRM before its dependent plugins — Redmine checks plugin dependencies at boot, and the new plugin versions require redmine_contacts 4.5.0+.
How to check your versions
- Plugins: Administration → Plugins — compare versions with the table above.
bundle show redmineup # prints the gem path including its version # or gem list redmineup
Technical appendix
Why mixing generations breaks things
Old plugins load their patches with include, new plugins with prepend. These two mechanics place patch code at different positions in the class hierarchy:
- a prepend-based patch always takes priority over the original class method;
- an include-based patch always sits behind the original class method.
When two plugins extend the same method of the same class and one patch is include-based while the other is prepend-based, the include-based patch is silently skipped: the prepend patch's super call goes straight to the original class method and never reaches the include module. There is no error and no log entry — the feature provided by the include-based patch just stops working.
This can happen between any two plugins that patch the same Redmine core method — it is not limited to plugins that formally depend on redmine_contacts. That is why all RedmineUP plugins in one installation must be moved to the prepend-based generation together.
A verified example: Query#initialize_values_for_select2 (filter value handling) is redefined by both Invoices (prepend-based) and older Contacts (include-based, without a super call) — with mixed generations the behavior of contact/invoice filters depends on patch loading order and breaks unpredictably.
Known error messages
- Boot failure — old plugin still defines the tag autocomplete route that now also exists in the redmineup gem 1.1.5+:
ArgumentError: Invalid route name, already in use: 'auto_complete_taggable_tags'
- Version guard aborts (upcoming releases enforce the requirements automatically via init.rb):
Redmine requires redmineup gem version 1.1.13 or higher (you're using 1.1.12). Please update with 'bundle update redmineup --conservative'. Please install redmine_contacts plugin 4.5.0 or higher
If you got boot errors, silently missing features or autocomplete/tag issues, it is all because the 2026 RedmineUP releases updated the way plugins integrate with Redmine and moved the shared tag autocomplete into the redmineup gem. Please make sure your installation uses: (1) redmineup gem 1.1.13 or later — run bundle update redmineup; (2) redmine_contacts 4.5.0 or later if you use Products, Helpdesk, Invoices, Finance or Mailchimp; (3) the plugin versions listed in our article. Update the gem first, then redmine_contacts, then the remaining plugins, run bundle install and rake redmine:plugins:migrate, and restart Redmine.