PurplePixel

+1 for a better documentation in offical docs for Rewrite Rules on nginx.

in my toolbox app, in settings, there is an option for "patch init.php", what this does, will rewrite the monkeypatch method of the init class, to write hooks to a folder and use those instead of eval'ing them, so if there is an error with them, its a proper backtrace instead of a pseudo one thru eval. note: you shouldn't use this on a live site and it can't be used in the community in the cloud, so a localhost or a dev site should suffice. it does modify a core file from IPS, so if you have any unexpected behaviors, you should restore the init.php from the IPS download. 
you can grab the latest toolbox from this repo: 
https://github.com/codingjungle/toolbox
make sure you are on the dev branch when you checkout. 

This is intentional behavior. The permissions are not imported.
Our approach was to document and choreograph exact steps that would need to be taken. You can mass assign a permission to all forums or all usergroups (depending on the view you're using), by clicking on the checkbox at the top of the grid (in your screenshot, "See Forum" as an example). We didn't have a quantity of forums where this was an issue, and we were using the conversion to consolidate member groups, so we left this as a manual process to be done while the first few hours of post cleanup were happening and before reopening.
That said, you could automate this and test that as you go through iterations of testing as I previously recommended. Consider looking at using the API to assign group permissions in a process that you execute after the data has been brought over:
https://invisioncommunity.com/developers/rest-api?endpoint=forums/forums/POSTitem

Are there tests suites available for the core Invision code and functionality?  We would like to know if our plugins and app potentially break key functionality in an automated way.

Can we get access to Invision's repo and make PRs for fixes/tidying?

Eg: Wrong description from my point of view, because it is thrown when a dataset is empty as well.

These days it takes generally less than a minute to upgrade to the latest version using the Admin CP auto upgrader.

Please consider providing a command line PHP script to perform installs/upgrades in a cronjob (or as single interactive command). I can handle automating updating the PHP files, but it is a problem to upgrade the database (which resides on multiple servers in multiple datacenters) in a production environment.
I need to be able to perform upgrades of the database and the php files with minimal downtime, perhaps in the early mornings unattended. Ideally, upgrades could be performed in a rolling update to multiply PHP servers/MySQL databases. These services run in containers and rolling updates are easy to automate with the right upgrade system tasks. The upgrades can be tested in the development servers before being pushed to the production servers.

Not certainly in that way. In the case of millions of users/topics/answers, the update time may take a long (for business) time. Of course, this also depends on the power of the application server and the database. But overall, the ability to have command-line tools would add a lot of administration, support and deployment abilities. As an example, it would be possible to describe in some manifest file a list with versions of applications/plug-ins and with some continuous integration tool builds an IPS test instance with needed additional stuff, proceed autotests for updated app branch, make deployment to production, etc.

Given the length of time taken for a relatively mature forum on a different provider (e.g. vBulletin) to convert to Invision - a forum I run with around 2.5 million posts has taken two and a half days, for example - would it not be prudent to offer the conversion process as a CLI command? This would allow the server the site is to be hosted on to be utilised to its maximum in terms of memory usage, and would also prevent the need for the site admin to have a browser tab open on the conversion process for the entirety of the operation.
It's not practical for popular sites to need to go down for days in order to convert and hopefully improve the experience for its users - anything that can be done to speed up the conversion process should be embraced.

One of the biggest complaints about my support (other than my disappearances) has been that i chose to keep it all in one topic. I've decided to make a topic for each of the apps, and will be requesting this topic be closed/deleted.  
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80-years-young, Bob! 80-years-young!
Both are a quick way to get up and running with a local environment and will install all of the dependencies required to run IPS on your local computer. IPS needs the following things:
(W)indows/Mac/Linux/??? operating system. This is whatever kind of operating system you have on your computer. It's irrelevant here other than the first letter. Have a desktop computer already? You're all set. (A)pache (or alternative) as a web server (for example, apache, nginx, etc.) (M)ySQL (or MariaDB) as a database server, where most of the content of your community is stored and retrieved (P)HP (the processor/programming language IPS' code is written in) This is commonly referred to as LAMP (Linux is the operating system, as is typical on servers) or WAMP (Windows is the operating system) or MAMP (MacOS is the operating system). You could install and configure each of these things separately on your computer, but the packages mentioned by @Ryan Ashbrook and @bfarber are two choices that combine all these common dependencies for development into a single, easier to install package. There are many others. You can search for "WAMP local development" for some guides and howtos. At the end of the day, once you have each of these somewhere on your machine and setup, you're ready to spin up a local copy of IPS.
If you have an Apple computer, you'll want MAMP instead. The alternative is running virtual machines and setting them up yourself. Depending on your operating system, there are a number of options to do this. If you're looking for quick and easy though, one of the options provided earlier will do just fine.
After you get your local environment setup, you simply follow the install instructions from the following guide. You'll need to create an account in MySQL that has the ability to create a database, and enable the prerequisite PHP extensions if they're not already enabled.
 

If I decide to install on my hard drive, as mentioned above, I would be using either AppServ or WAMP. I did click on each link to see what they are all about. They both appear to be a bit complex. What exactly do they do for me. How do they affect the requirement for Apache + PHP + MySQL, being as it's installed on my hard drive. My thought is it's acting like a shell mimicking a server . I'm a 80-year-old rookie but I'm still facing the challenge.
Bob
 

Instead of trying to add an additional parameter input to a template (which would be challenging, but doable), I'd instead just duplicate the template in your plugin and add the additional parameter there.
 
That said, if you're bent on adding an additional parameter to the existing template (keep in mind a future update could cause all sorts of weird things to happen if you do this, so be prepared to maintain this plugin), you can redefine the entire method in a theme hook file. Create a theme hook on the appropriate area, and then redefine the template method in the theme hook file. Semi-example here where I overwrote the calendar view template group for an app:
 
//<?php /* To prevent PHP errors (extending class does not exist) revealing path */ if ( !defined( '\IPS\SUITE_UNIQUE_KEY' ) ) { exit; } class locator_hook_calendar_event_view extends _HOOK_CLASS_ { /* !Hook Data - DO NOT REMOVE */ public static function hookData() { return parent::hookData(); } /* End Hook Data */ public function view( $event, $commentsAndReviews, $attendees, $address=NULL, $reminder=NULL ) { \IPS\Output::i()->cssFiles = array_merge( \IPS\Output::i()->cssFiles, \IPS\Theme::i()->css( 'calendar.css', 'locator', 'front' ) ); \IPS\Output::i()->jsFiles = array_merge( \IPS\Output::i()->jsFiles, \IPS\Output::i()->js( 'front_calendar.js', 'locator', 'front' ) ); return \IPS\Theme::i()->getTemplate( 'calendar', 'locator' )->view( $event, $commentsAndReviews, $attendees, $address, $reminder ); } } As you can see, I overwrote the PHP method generated by the template files...you could use this approach to add the new parameter.

It should do the Form helper
Also
\system\Helpers\Form\Form.php
/* If this is dependant on a toggle which isn't set, don't return a value so that it doesn't trigger an error we cannot see */ if ( $element->htmlId and \in_array( $element->htmlId, $htmlIdsToIgnore ) ) { $values[ $_name ] = $stringValues ? $element::stringValue( $element->defaultValue ) : $element->defaultValue; continue; } So if the required field has been hidden by toggle we should not get an error.
Yes
Without toggles

The required fields validate by Helpers
With toggles

With toggles + I've removed 
\IPS\Output::i()->error( 'reg_required_fields', '1C223/5', 403, '' );
With toggles. Required field not filled

I'd just like to raise this thread from the dead and add a +1. Modern PHP apps use Composer. We extend IPB a bunch and it's hacky atm. Having IPB be accessible via composer would make updating IPB much easier too. It's totally fine if the packages were behind a client login, very used to this on other projects.

I don't think you understand how composer works, we will add a custom URL with our authorisation tokens for our projects which will fetch directly from Invision's servers directly. It's no less secure than how the current update system is implemented already, just provides another method of integration.