Hello All,
I'm in need to some advice here as to the best strategy to use in upgrading a community-oriented site that's currently running in D5. I'm not sure when D5's lifecycle will officially end, but I thought it best to start trying to migrate as D6 seems pretty well supported module wise at the moment.
My problems are; two modules aren't supported: mediafield (audio field and video field) and buddylist doesn't seem to have a direct upgrade path.
Other than that, the site I'm upgrading makes heavy use of cck/views, and I was wondering if it's possible to do a complete update on those... I tried upgrading a beta site from D5 to D6, and views didn't seem to import cleanly.
Over all, I also got database problems relating to missing columns, and similar problems... HELP: where do I start in ensuring a clean upgrade process? I've upgraded other Drupal instances from 4.x to 5.x and found the upgrade clean, but that was on a site with minimal 3rd party modules.
One thing I'd like to know is; will Drupal ever have a standardised plugin framework between major versions, and is there a way of running 5x modules on D6 through a compatibility layer?
Hoping I've not asked too much - I really have scoured the site and read a lot, but I still have questions...
Many thanks in advance!
CalonDdraig
Comments
>not sure when D5's
>not sure when D5's lifecycle will officially end
When 7.0 is released. That could be almost a year away. Or more. So it might be best to wait since then your 2 other modules may be ported :-)
Views/CCK *should* update ... again, the longer you wait, the more likely that any bugs in the process are ironed out. You shouldn't really get missing columns etc - provided that all the contrib modules provide proper update routines.
There is no 5.x/6.x compatibility layer. There's a page somewhere about the Drupal philosophy of "breaking the API" between each major release. I guess a compatibility layer might in theory be possible but would doubtless require re-engineering significant amounts of core just to make it possible; I've not seen anyone proposing or working on this of late!
gpk
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www.alexoria.co.uk
gpk
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www.alexoria.co.uk
The framework for
The framework for contributed modules is standardized. If you follow the required steps for an upgrade and something doesn't work, you can consider it a bug.
No compatibility layer exists for running D5 modules in D6, and you can assume that there never will. APIs change, and the functionality itself may also change freely. There are always module and theme conversion guides. Core Drupal is committed to preserve and migrate all user data during changes, but contributed modules don't always make that commitment.
If you run update.php and the database schema of some enabled module is not updated, that can be a bug or a glitch (for example, running out of php memory). You can take a look at the system table in the database for the serial number of the last update done on a module, compare it with the last updates in the module-name.install file, and try to force-run the missing updates.
Your two problematic modules, mediafield and buddylist, seem practically abandoned. You will probably need to migrate to alternative modules which are actively maintained and more popular.
The active buddylist solutions are:
http://drupal.org/project/user_relationships
http://drupal.org/project/friendlist
A comparison: http://groups.drupal.org/node/14625
They both provide migration paths from buddylist. The second one looked very promising, but after the shitfest outlined in http://drupal.org/node/357941 I am not sure what to expect, so either wait and watch a bit or try the first one. It has a migration plugin for D5, so migrate while still in D5.
I don't know much about mediafield, so you will need to do some research. You may need some custom code to migrate, not sure.
Hmmm looks like a
Hmmm looks like a developer_mediation.module could be in order .. ;)
gpk
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www.alexoria.co.uk
gpk
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www.alexoria.co.uk