Question

What I did

Let’s say my module was called “some_module”. Without disabling from the Modules menu, I renamed that folder and changed the contents, now it’s “another_module”. I perceive that the site is slowing down, trying to still look for “some_module”.

What I’ve tried and expected

I’ve tried clearing the cache a few times, expecting Drupal to rebuild it’s module list based on what’s available. However, I’m not sure how the inner-workings of enabling/disabling modules works, and I don’t know if my site is still going slow because of this reason, or for another reason.

What I found in the documentation

I read some of the documentation on Drupal Modules, but it looks like there are some pretty simple functions like module_exists(), but it doesn’t describe whether or not it will ever stop looking for “some_module”.

My question

So, my question is: have I left behind bloated garbage that is slowing down my Drupal site by not disabling the module before renaming it?

And a bonus question…are any of these documented benchmarks applicable to this situation?

Answer 1

Drupal will keep on looking for that module while there’s still an entry for it in the system table. Delete the entry from there, delete any tables that your module created, then clear your caches. It will be as if the module never existed so if you still perceive your site to be slow at that point you know that the old module meta data was not the culprit.