A plugin is deactivated if it is updated and the plugin folder has been renamed at some point.

[ReneHermi]

This seems to be a new unexpected behavior:

A plugin whose folder has been renamed will be deactivated as soon as you update it.

Reproduce:

• Rename the folder of an activated plugin to something like plugin-name-xy (People do this all the time for several reasons)
• The plugin will be disabled (expected due to the modified plugin folder)
• Activate again the plugin via wp-admin
• Update the plugin to a new version
• The plugin folder will be renamed to plugin-name (Unexpected)
• The plugin will be disabled silently (Unexpected)

[ReneHermi]

The plugin will be disabled silently (Unexpected)

I am aware the plugin is disabled because wordpress renames its folder, so the result is not unexpected from a technical viewpoint but WP should not do that, espcially not silently after an update and I "believe" this was not always they case. Did this change intentionally?

The problem is that a user might not notice that a plugin is disabled, especially when plugins are automatically updated.

[ReneHermi]

A collegue just told me this behavior exist from the beginning and I assume it's caused by the zip folder structure where the plugin main folder name is the first folder of a plugin.zip.

In that case I suggest adding a red colored plugin meta notice like this then:

​https://monosnap.com/file/sJQnbqeC8GzGOg9eeR6zUPot005f8K

"You have renamed the plugin folder plugin-name/plugin-name.php to something else. Please rename it or this plugin will be disabled on next update."

This could be realized by a simple check if the plugin slug exist as folder inside the wp-content/plugins/ folder and would not be an expensive check.