My Drupal focus is my business' site, which today is a Drupal 7 site. This concentrates my Drupal journey like a laser beam.
I have not devoted more than a few brain cells to even familiarizing myself with Drupal 8 thus far. No doubt it has the promise of being fabulous, at least unto itself.
What I do occasionally wonder is whether or not it will be feasible to migrate my site from D7 to D8, and if so at what level of effort, cost and time. I previously ported the site from D6 to D7, but the D6 site was not in production when this work was performed. Porting a live site to another live site is far more demanding.
So earlier today I got around to taking an inventory of the D8 status of the projects my site uses in its live and/or test and/or dev environments. With just several exceptions, the inventory simply looks at each project's main page, specifically at the public releases that are listed.
This inventory exercise paints a very ugly picture. With respect to my site, there is a shockingly high percentage of projects of concern to me that show no status whatsoever for Drupal 8.
From this I can only conclude that the likelihood of my even contemplating porting my business' site from D7 to D8 anytime in the next few years is vanishingly small. More like zero.
You decide for yourself. My inventory is on Google drive at https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxcONGyVGGyKeFFGdXJCNnNVNjg/edit?usp=sh...
I thought it would be interesting to share my inventory. Perhaps I am over reacting to it, but I don't think that's the case.
What are your thoughts on this broad topic?
Bob
Comments
I would go on the assumption
I would go on the assumption that eventually you will be able to migrate to D8. Since D8 is not out yet and as some said in the Meetup Thursday it's possible we may not see D8 released until next year. Your site could stay on D7 for a long time at least until there is real talk about a D9 release. The sites that need to focus on upgrading are the D6 sites and below.
Mary M.
D7 to D8 Status
D8 hasn't had a Beta release yet, so many module writers haven't spent much serious effort into looking at working on an upgrade, so not seeing the modules you used listed as having a D8 version yet isn't surprising. My guess would be that many of the modules with D8 work are by people who are working on some of the D8 development.
There also isn't going to be a big rush to need to update to D8. First, my guess is that D8 won't really come out until next year (hopefully we do get betas this year and some sites will go live on beta, but I don't expect the final release till next year). Once we get betas, we should start to see more modules being updated.
Only after D8 is released will D9 start to be worked on seriously, and it is the release of D9 that is the key time mark for when you should have migrated from D7, and that will be a number of years into the future.
As far as porting a live site, the model that seems to be promoted for moving to D8 is not the same as has been done previously. You will not "upgrade" a site to D8, but "rebuild" the structure in D8 (on a development server), and then migrate the contents. This model should actually work better for a live site than the upgrade method used before.
I agree with Richard... D7
I agree with Richard... D7 sites should wait until D9 is in beta before having to consider upgrading. Also, a new release cycle has been proposed which would extend D7 security releases even further.
Having been through the
Having been through the transition from 5 > 6 > 7... you will have some serious time past the D8 release before D7 becomes detrimental. It wasn't until somewhere about 7.12 that switching from D6 to D7 became advantageous.
Considering how much of a hodge podge D8 is right now (this will leave fan boys and girls chomping at the bit) it's still a fair ways out. Even when it hits beta or RC, the contributed modules will be a fair ways behind. Just this past February when I was working in D8 to migrate modules, every single tutorial on how to make a module was outdated, and their example files no longer worked. I just walked away. Why spend all the time writing a new version of your module only to have it die due to structural changes?
D8 is a ways out... and it will be a headache for early adapters for a while... and then just like every major release version thus far it will prove to be notably superior and awesome.
...oh, except Twig. That will suck. Every templating engine ever has sucked. That'a lesson the latest batch of johny come lately's haven't experienced 18 times over. It sounds great in concept, and it's never not once across a plethora of platforms not sucked.
Jesse Nicola -- Shredical six different ways to Sunday! -- My Portfolio
Thanks for all your
Thanks for all your perspectives. My translation of your input is that my thus far having ignored D8 altogether has been the best allocation of my precious time, and will likely continue to be through the end of 2015.
I'd agree with that
I'd agree with that assessment, unless you do back end development in which case to stay current with the market you will want to be a relatively early adopter of D8.
Also, D8 from a front end UI experience hasn't changed so drastically you will get lost, making it a relatively easy transitions. It's also really intuitive, and unlike D7 isn't vastly surpassed by admin tools!
Jesse Nicola -- Shredical six different ways to Sunday! -- My Portfolio