Posted by reubenavery on September 20, 2013 at 12:51am
Yes
22% (2 votes)
No
78% (7 votes)
Total votes: 9
Is it time to abandon 2.x and rewrite from scratch into 3.x?
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Topic
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- Media core (18)
- Media Initiative (63)
- Media Support Squad (7)
- Add-On modules (13)
Comments
I swear to everyone, this is
I swear to everyone, this is Not A Troll.
I'm up to my neck now in my fifth attempt at deploying a solid Media and related module installation for a client project.
Due to my pride, I refuse now to back down. This Shall Be Done.
But the deeper I go down the rabbit holes -- I'm up to the 5th patch submitted thus far this week -- I remain overwhelmed by the bizarre complexity and resulting bugs and frustrations.
It's been a couple of years now I think that we've been in the 2.x dirty alpha mode. We've got to start facing some difficult decisions. And not just us of course but the many related module projects that rely on the Media and File Entity APIs.
Let's start: Entity View Modes. Ugh. Gack. This remains awful. Every day I have to reeducate myself on the esoteric differences between a "display mode" and a "file display mode". Forget trying to explain this to my design and project management team, they look at me like I'm deliberately messing with them.
I will close this brief rant with a quote: "A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked."
I think we really need to pull back and redefine for Drupal and Media what a "simple system that worked" really is.
I don't think this
I don't think this conversation will be productive because you need to propose alternatives to how things should work, and still handle everyone's crazy feature requests. Because if you don't then everyone will say your solution sucks because it's too basic and they can't do anything with it.
For what it's worth, we are sort of planning a complete rewrite of the Media part in D8, but File entity as proposed was going to be ported and not changed.
Senior Drupal Developer for Lullabot | www.davereid.net | @davereid
View Modes need to be
View Modes need to be drastically rethought in how they're presented. This is my third major Media integration and I still barely can get them.
I've been building out the media browser considerably for this job. I'll definitely be offering a patch or sandbox module of it when it's complete.
Also, I have my eyes on two other key challenges: an entirely new widget interface for imagecrop, and working the kinks out of media_multiselect enough that hopefully it can emerge from the sandbox into a proper project.
If you're not happy with
If you're not happy with Media module, you are more than welcome to use other solutions rather than complain. I just don't understand posts like these, especially since the patches you've posted have made sense, but there has not been a lot of time since you submitted them for someone to have reviewed them.
Senior Drupal Developer for Lullabot | www.davereid.net | @davereid
Media and FIle entity are
Media and FIle entity are pretty solid and much better as they used to be some time ago (thanks to hard work done by Dave and others at DrupalCorn*). Of course there are problems, but people are working hard on them. When you dig into media stuff in Drupal you immediately realize how complex this field is. There are no simple answers, as we have to satisfy needs of simple and small websites and also big media sites with millions of assets. Something that may sound super simple and logic for your site can be completely unusable for 100s of others.
Total rewrite would definitely be a complete waste of time. A lot of great work has been done and throwing that away would be insane. Media just needs a lot of polishing.
We appreciate your work, but you really cannot expect to get reviews in few hours. That's simply not how Drupal works. You can always come to #drupal-media, ping people any try to find reviewers or at least arrange a review exchange.
*Correct me if I'm wrong about that...
Janez Urevc - software engineer @ Examiner.com - @slashrsm - janezurevc.name
I wasn't complaining so much
I wasn't complaining so much as asserting maybe it's time to make a fresh and objective assessment.