Feature request: Parse the existing Metadata blocks of the destination instance of Dataverse

[PatrickKibies]

Hello HenningTimm and community,

as we discussed yesterday in two sentences I'd really like a feature (and I think it would be quite useful, since one simply loses the overview once some blocks are installed...) that utitlizes the dataverse API calls as in

curl "https://demo.dataverse.org/api/metadatablocks"
for the list of installed blocks and

curl "https://demo.dataverse.org/api/metadatablocks/$BLOCKID"
for the details of the already installed blocks in order to check for conflicts between existing blocks and the one you are planning to install.

Best,
Patrick

[HenningTimm]

Thank you for this feature request. This sounds like a very helpful feature!

I am currently pondering what the best behavior towards conflicting entries would be:

1. Always report an error, when an entry within the metadata block is already present in the instance. This would be helpful for developing new metadata schemas that should not collide with existing ones.
2. Only report a warning. This would be helpful for updating existing metadata blocks that are expected to collide and overwrite existing entries.
3. Report errors for "dangerous" operations only (e.g. an entry was removed and a new, similar entry, is contained). Identifying dangerous operations can be hard though.

I will need to think about this for a bit. Suggestions are very welcome :)