How to publish a plugin update for WP if it is not backwards compatible?

Question

WordPress

Hello.
I'm a plugin developer for WP, and the 1.x version of this plugin (which has been running successfully for over a year) has a couple of hundred people.

But, version 1.x has a number of problems, and to solve them, it was decided to redo everything almost from scratch. A different principle of operation, a different way of entering and storing data in the database, and so on.

Now it turns out that if I upload the version 2.x code to the WP Directory, people will be notified about the new version, they will be updated, and all those settings that worked before will stop working, and a bunch of "dead weight" will remain in the database.

I see this solution: publish the 2.x plugin under a new name, as a different project, and link to it in version 1.x. Let them remove 1.x, download 2.x, and set it up again.

But this is very inconvenient for users. And I don’t want to create a new plugin, go through the review again and all that.

Maybe there is some elegant solution? Like, I can indicate somewhere that the update breaks backward compatibility, and people will see this notification when updating, and will already decide whether to update or not.

Answer 1

I would implement it in the following way.
1) Calmly upload the update to the repository
2) Either, as you were already prompted, add a notice, asking you to click on the button to start the update, or after updating the plugin, automatically start this process.
3) adapt the database for the new update, delete the old table

Answer 2

After the update, hang a notice on top of the admin panel with a notification about the need to update the data and a button to start the update. Click the button to start the update. For example, WooCommerce does this

Answer 3

and remove unnecessary from the database when installing the plugin update?