a real-life site attempted to add an attribute to a contentclass with more than 400 instances, and 15 translations, and the process timed out.

this was on 3.8, but the problem probably persists on all the subsequent releases. even 4.0.

also, the database is locked while this is happening, since the process is within a transaction.

either we put a limit on the number of objects we allow eZP to update, to avoid a PHP timeout, like with the removal and move of large numbers of nodes, and/or we provide a CLI scripts that does this.

the CLI script should be able to take the class id and attribute propertis as parameters, and execute with 0 execution limit.

Steps to reproduce

add an attribute to a content class with many instances and/or translations.
when publishing, the process will timeout on a normal server (1-2 minutes execution time limit), and your task is incomplete.

remaining problem: how to add an attribute to a contentclass with many instances without risking a script execution timeout.