I would really like to see an item that is craftable in game that could be applied to a Basic (1x1) Storage Drawer which would upgrade the drawer from a basic drawer to a compacting drawer - keeping the items and upgrades inside.

The item could be crafted with a Compacting Drawer as an ingredient.

Applying the item to the drawer will result in the Basic Drawer being converted to a Compacting Drawer in the world, with the items that were in the Basic Drawer being inserted into the lowest tier spot that they can fit into inside the Compacting Drawer with all storage upgrades staying inside.

This will prevent the player from being forced to move his/her current drawer with packing tape, placing a compacting drawer where the basic drawer was, unpacking the basic drawer nearby, piping all of the items over to the new compacting drawer, and then cleaning up the mess.

A good example of this behavior in another mod is the Storage Crate Upgrade from Actually Additions.

Just a note: there is a difference between storage upgrades and function upgrades. Adding a little more space to a drawer is easy, however compacting drawers have to check few different crafting recipes to store items internally correctly. I do not say it is not possible, but potentially hard to do.

It shouldn't be too difficult to do. The upgrade would be a total block replacement, followed by an item insertion with the contents. The rest should work itself out. Only potential caveat is storage differences (1x1s can store more)

@jaquadro check the inventory before applying the update and refuse to work if it could overflow.

Or explode the items everywhere. I mean, it already happens on destruction.

@Shad0wSlam on destruction there is no other way to handle it. On block upgrade we have a chance to check if the block is eligible for the upgrade.

@Shad0wSlam That gives me an idea that placing sealed drawers in the nether should make them explode their contents instead...

Inventory check and player message seems the most appropriate solution.

I had the exact same idea! It would be nice to have an upgrade that you can shift right-click on a regular drawer to make it a compacting drawer.

I would like to see this as a coming soo feature :D