Running 4.5 modules on 4.6?

By paulbutcher on 17 Oct 2005 at 12:07 UTC

We are currently considering a Drupal installation and for various reasons (mainly the fact that all or our servers currently run PHP5 and have to continue to do so for other reasons) strongly prefer 4.6.

There are a lot of modules which are only released for 4.5, however - some of which we would definitely be looking to use if possible. The module download page says "Modules released for Drupal 4.5 will not work for Drupal 4.6." which is fair enough. Were we foolish enough to try running a 4.5 module on 4.6, however, what kind of problems would we be likely to hit?

How quickly are 4.5 modules likely to be ported to 4.6? How much effort is it likely to be if we were to try to port a module ourselves (we have a team of experienced PHP developers).

I know that most of these questions are "how long is a piece of string" questions, so apologies in advance!

Thanks!

Comments

My guess is that If it

pz commented 17 October 2005 at 12:12

My guess is that If it hasn't been updated now it probably won't be either.

Ask one of your coders to check this page:
http://drupal.org/node/12347
they shouldn't have too much trouble figuring out if its worth updating or not.

4.5 vs 4.6 vs 4.7

sethcohn commented 17 October 2005 at 15:09

The changes to each are quite extensive... in many cases the API changed a lot.... so you _must_ port from one to the next.

In a different numbering scheme, these would be v5, v6, and v7, not point changes...

That said, for the most part, the changes are easy enough for experienced php coders to make... it's well documented what changes from version to version.

In addition, you'd be making friends in the community if you do port things.... heck, put up a donation page and ask for contributions to cover some costs of it... If you're doing it anyway, it'll be gravy.

Hmmm. That's got me thinking

paulbutcher commented 17 October 2005 at 16:28

Thanks for the feedback. Food for thought.

It's got me thinking about the upgrade process. There are some features coming in 4.7 which we would definitely be interested in, so we would probably be looking to upgrade when 4.7 was released.

It sounds to me like this upgrade process might be "interesting"? That we might find ourselves in a situation where we want to upgrade, but are locked in because we're using modules which haven't yet been ported to 4.7?

Given that we haven't started yet - might it be the case that we'd be better off going with 4.7 from the start? How close to "ready" is 4.7? Are we just signing up for an upgrade nightmare as we try to track 4.7 development releases? How many (if any) 4.6 modules have already been ported to 4.7?

Sorry for the raft of questions, but given that we have the option to "start right", we might as well get as close as we can :-)

Thanks!

Unless you are actively

sepeck commented 17 October 2005 at 19:09

Unless you are actively involved in the Drupal developer community (on the mail list) and track the Drupal project issues and understand them, you will be confused if you try CVS. Due to some significant changes in the last two weeks, CVS download currently has some issues. Most are known, some are not :).

My suggestion is to work with 4.6. There is always an upgrade from Drupal core. There a some additional suggestions when upgrading, but I have generally been successful.

If you can code and want to, then the module update process is fairly well documented. More people who actively contribute is always welcome.

Due to the growth this year, we are going through some growing pains and working hard at addressing some of them. There is a Developers conference in Amsterdam this week and and a number of things planned.

Welcome to the community. Have fun.

-sp
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Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain

-Steven Peck
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Test site, always start with a test site.
_{Drupal Best Practices Guide}

4.6 is the place to be, and will be the place to be....

sethcohn commented 17 October 2005 at 19:45

For at least the next 4-6 months, 4.6 is the place to be...

4.7's got some great features, and new code that makes it attractive, but 4.6 is still the bulk of what people are using and will be. The code freeze delay is one reason to plan that far off.

Go with 4.6 and figure that 4.7 will be a 6 month plus target to shoot for.