I have been following the development of the Media modules suite for some time, and although I think you are heading in a good direction, I have had growing concerns of how long time it will take for this module to become stable (along with the other related modules such as Media_Flickr and Media_Youtube, etc.), given the amount of open issues and some of them with serious challenges that will take time to resolve.

And now the 2.x branch was just launched. What does this mean in practise?

Will the attempts of making a stable 1.0 version be shifted over to 2.x?
If starting "now", given the time it took to get 1.x this far and still nowhere near a stable release, what kind of time frame would be realistic to have for a stable 2.x version? Not this year, right?

What are the main differences featurewise between 1.x and 2.x?
(what are the reasons for the number shift, as it indicates significant changes, I assume).
Is this documented somewhere already?

Many module development cycles here at d.o. show that a time frame of a year or more is not entirely urealistic for a new branch of a fairly complex module (suite) to reach stable version (ready for production/live sites). If indeed it will take until next summer before the 2.x branch is stable, AND if that also means that 1.x will never hit stable release (development focus shifting away from 1.x), then this affects the perspectives and strategy for lots of Drupal sites, which is why I post this concern here now.

I assume it is important for many people here to be able to adjust the perspectives and plans to somewhat realistic perspectives.

The current situation on Drupal 7 is that the Media module suite is about to become crucial for many or even most (?) new Drupal web sites. Or maybe that was the prevailing perspectives up until now, which the effects of a 2.x branch might change?

The Media module suite is currently not "just another contributed module", so the perspectives are important.

Comments

effulgentsia’s picture

effulgentsia commented

These are great questions. Aaron, Dave Reid, or I will try to post some answers here next week.

tsvenson’s picture

tsvenson commented

After talking with Dave Reid on IRC re the media module, I have decided that I will use it for my sites from now on. I had basically two options to chose between, either an Insert, Filefield Sources and IMCE combo or the Media module right now. Media module would in either case be the long term solution for me.

The Insert route would have meant quite a bit migration work at some future stage, especially in regards to embedded files in text fields. So, after talking to Dave and also spending some time testing Media 2.x, I decided that the limitations it has now, especially when it comes to file system organization, is a much smaller issue than the migration would demand. Thus, I will use the Media module 2.x from now on.

The main difference, as I understand it, between 1.x and 2.x is that 2.x is going to leverage Views a lot, especially when it comes to the media browser. I think this is great as it will assure that those two modules work perfectly together and from a user perspective it will probably only mean improvements. So, instead of building a lot of extra custom code, Views (that is installed on practically all sites anyways) is used.

I also got a clear impression from Dave that the new maintainers that have been added to the project are very eager to get a full release out as soon as possible, and also offered to help as much as I possible can. Which will mainly be around testing and usability of it.

So, from what I see of the 2.x already, it is not going to delay the full release. On the contrary, it was probably good to make the branch instead of incorporating the Views use and other stuff in 1.x. It also seems to me that focus is to make 2.0 the full release, but keep 1.x for those sites that needs it.

Thus, I like very much what I have found out the last few days and look forward to help getting the 2.0 release out as soon as possible.

arthurf’s picture

arthurf commented

1.x is really close to being released. Once it is out we will only do critical bug and security fixes. All new feature development will be happening in the 2.x branch.

Asper the differences between 1.x and 2.x the critical items are under the hood improvements which will improve the ability for other module developers to implement items inside the browser and improvements to the default UI.

Leeteq’s picture

Leeteq commented
Category: support » task

Great, how about making this a task in terms of "documenting" the differences?
(both featurewise and perspective-wise, in some sort of table-like overview as a reference for people's strategy related considerations?)

ParisLiakos’s picture

ParisLiakos commented

Also, will there be any upgrade path from 1.x to 2.x?

dave reid’s picture

dave reid
he/him
Primary language English
Location Nebraska USA
commented

Yes, we will support an upgrade path between 1.x and 2.x as much as physically possible. We have a task of documenting 1.x vs 2.x as a portion of this week's sprint.

chrisschaub’s picture

chrisschaub commented

I hate to ask this, but should I use 7.1.x or 7.2.x? I have been developing a site and used 7.2.x-dev. I checked the schemas and they seem the same (except for the media field stuff which I'm not using). Can I downgrade from 7.2.x-dev to 7.1.x? It seems like I might need to change the module owner of the files, but the schemas seem almost the same at this point. Or, should I just stick with 7.2.x because it's real and going to be for a while? Thanks for any input, and sorry to hijack this thread, it just seemed like a good place to capture this question.

arthurf’s picture

arthurf commented

@cshaub I would say that 7.2.x is more advisable as 1.x will not have any new features. Note that it uses the newer file entity module rather than the one that is bundled with the 7.1.x version of media

chrisschaub’s picture

chrisschaub commented

Awesome, thanks for that, made my day!

alanom’s picture

alanom commented

A really useful, concrete task to achieve this issue could be to put on the project page a bullet list of the remaining issues that need to be fixed for the 2.X stable release. I'm guessing there's more to this than the list on http://drupal.org/node/1291276 (if not we should really link those points that aren't issues to an issue, or flag up the fact it's only a couple of issues away from being stable).

Getting this clear would be invaluable:

  • It'll provide a simple constant answer to question like @cschaub's, which every site builder or developer coming to Media has - should I go 1.X or 2.X? The answer will be: since 2.X has more features and is the focus, go 2.X if you can live with, work around or fix these listed issues, 1.X if you can't. The essence of every question like @cschaub's is, do the benefits of 2.X outweigh the reasons for issues which cause it to still be listed as 'unstable'? A clear, self-updating list of those issues will let everyone figure out their answer that question.
  • We (people in the community not already particularly involved with Media dev work) will be able to spot opportunities where our time would be best spent to help bring closer that stable release.
  • It'll make life easier for the guys with the big task of taming that issue queue
  • We'll be able to judge a rough idea of when the stable release might land by the dates these last issues are getting crossed off. I get the impression that it is getting close now, I'm sure it'll be pretty cool and motivating to see these last issues getting steadily crossed off.
tsvenson’s picture

tsvenson commented

FYI Dave Reid started a WIKI page at http://groups.drupal.org/node/215218 listing the differences between the two branches.

Also, I'm very sure that everything planner for Media during DrupalCon Denver will help us better organize what we already have/are working on and what needs to be done.

dave reid’s picture

dave reid
he/him
Primary language English
Location Nebraska USA
commented
Status: Active » Fixed

I've added a link to the 1.x vs 2.x wiki from the project page.

Status: Fixed » Closed (fixed)

Automatically closed -- issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.

phponwebsites’s picture

phponwebsites commented

Hi,

Is any patches available to upgrade from 7.1 to 7.2?
Or i have to download 7.2 version?