Trackers; Avoiding silent duplication of "children" items when duplicating a single item

• Support request
• Bug

Note that the "Clone tracker items" option name has been changed for "Duplicate tracker items" in Tiki25.

On tracker control panel it is possible to enable the option "Duplicate tracker items (Allow copying tracker item information to a new tracker item. ) "

When duplicating an item, if this item is used in another tracker through an item link the "children" items will be duplicate too. Victor 🙏 ported to my attention that this code/feature is here since 2012.
While it was added 10 years ago and trackers or tracker usage complexity has greatly improved and changed, other people may be using it this feature as is. (so it need to be preserved)
The code is shared and used by the clone_tracker_item of the pluginListExecute.

I see several issues;

1. This is transparent and the user is not aware of this silent multiplication of items .
2. Some information are not added to the duplication (like the category)
3. Fields with automatic value assignment may received an unwanted (or unexpected) value. (user-selector creator or last editor will be filled automatically).

Here an video to illustrate the issue;

On tracker A I have a product.
On tracker B I have 12 orders with an item link to the products in the tracker A.

After I duplicate a single product in tracker A, it will create also a duplicate for each item it is link to so now I have 24 new product items and as the tracker use a user selector field set to creator, admin is now the value of the field.

Duplicate Trackeritem Create Children

To answer the problem we need to discuss and have a consensus.

- We need a new option for the user to select if only the targeted item should be duplicated (new behaviour) or if the targeted items + all children should be duplicated (as it is today).
-- Where the option selection should be set ?

• Option1: As it is related to the Duplicate tracker items it should be a child preference of the option on the control panel : tiki-admin.php?page=trackers but then it will be trackers wide
• Option2: As it related to the item-link field, an option to allow duplication if parent item is duplicated. This will allow to have some tracker behaving one way and other trackers the other way.
• Option3: When duplicating an item a check if children exist and if yes a modal/option/selection screen with a checkbox: "Do you want to duplicate also this item children" (y/n checkbox)

- What should be the default ?
- The clone action in the plugin ListExecute ?

Reminder: This code/feature is here since 2012 so people may use it as is.

- I added some documentation to

• https://doc.tiki.org/Tracker-Settings
• https://doc.tiki.org/PluginListExecute

This bug has been demonstrated on show2.tiki.org

Please demonstrate your bug on show2.tiki.org