What's the correct way to uninstall a plugin which MUST NOT be enabled?

Question

I hadn't allowed Craft to update for a while, and then did, but it broke on a plugin, and I couldn't get into the CP. I figured out which plugin was causing the problem, it turned out I wasn't using it, so I disabled it in craft/config/general.php as follows:

return [
    '*' => [
        'disabledPlugins' => ['embedded-assets-link'],
    ],
];

That enabled me access to the CP, but, being disabled, I couldn't uninstall it through the CP, as explained here.

I tried many things, including

• remove references to the plugin in craft/vendor/craftcms/plugins.php
• removed references to the plugin from composer.json
• run composer update

and probably some other nonsense.

So, having done it the hard way, I'd like to ask, is there a correct way to remove a plugin which cannot be enabled ('cause it's broken) ?

Answer 1

You will need to enable it to uninstall it but you can do everything via CLI.

First ./craft plugin/enable plugin-handle then ./craft plugin/uninstall plugin-handle then composer remove namespace/package-name.

If you really can't enable it as above, you'd need to composer remove namespace/package-name and manually remove any references in your plugins table, project config as well as any tables the plugin may have created on install.