HWDMedia Plugin

Seems that my initial joy at HWDMedia working with CB 2.0 was short lived, I updated to 2.0.0-beta.4 and now I get the message that my HWDMedia plug-in is not compatible and may not work, well it does not. So obviously it needs an update and I will ask HWDMedia to look into it, but we all know that may take a while. Is there somebody with the experience to suggest what changed so I can set about fixing things? My test site is a long way off production but trials have been going well and the user video upload has been important and now it has stopped I will be under pressure to review.

CB 2.0 Beta 1-4 is not for production sites. Do not install it on production sites. It has been released as a Beta for testing purposes only.

No CB 1.x plugin is compatible with CB 2.x. We're working on a Legacy layer to add better backwards support, but there is no guarantee of functionality. If you've already installed CB 2.0 onto a production site then rollback to last backup or backup and try to install CB 1.x over it.

If you are working on a development site and preparing for a production release then continue to use CB 1.x and upgrade later once CB 2.x goes Stable and we've more of our plugins up to date and when we've Legacy compatibility working better.

With respect, does anybody actually read the questions? Having paid for Developer support and presumably passed some basic test of commitment. I KNOW that 2.x is beta, it is all over it. I said my site was a long way from production. So please credit me some common sense. My only post to date was to say the hwdmedia did work fine with the beta release. Now it does not, I know it will likely take the developer some time to get it working, said that in my last post. I only asked for a bit of help as to your professional views on what might have become broken, it may not be much and something I can fix, it is a simple plug-in. All you gave me was a slam down for even using your dam code. Talk about confidence in your beta test community. I wish I could remove some Karma from your total. This is a developer forum, I believe I should expect better from this part of the community.

ukphotoguy wrote: With respect, does anybody actually read the questions? Having paid for Developer support and presumably passed some basic test of commitment. I KNOW that 2.x is beta, it is all over it. I said my site was a long way from production. So please credit me some common sense. My only post to date was to say the hwdmedia did work fine with the beta release. Now it does not, I know it will likely take the developer some time to get it working, said that in my last post. I only asked for a bit of help as to your professional views on what might have become broken, it may not be much and something I can fix, it is a simple plug-in. All you gave me was a slam down for even using your dam code. Talk about confidence in your beta test community. I wish I could remove some Karma from your total. This is a developer forum, I believe I should expect better from this part of the community.

Hi,

let me first try to address your initial post as best I can and maybe Beat will also join in too.

Seems that my initial joy at HWDMedia working with CB 2.0 was short lived, I updated to 2.0.0-beta.4 and now I get the message that my HWDMedia plug-in is not compatible and may not work, well it does not.

The message you see means that the already installed CB plugin is missing some xml elements that basically hint that the code of this plugin was most likely developed before CB 2.0. Depending on the actual content of the php related code of the plugin this may not be the case.

So when you say something does not work in the plugin does it throw a warning or an error if you have debug on at maximum level?

So obviously it needs an update and I will ask HWDMedia to look into it, but we all know that may take a while. Is there somebody with the experience to suggest what changed so I can set about fixing things? My test site is a long way off production but trials have been going well and the user video upload has been important and now it has stopped I will be under pressure to review.

As we are getting closer to stability releases (and RC) of CB 2.0 we will be blogging about third party developed CB plugins and how they need to proceed in order to convert (if needed) their plugins for CB 2.0+ compatibility.

This is something that has sparked internal team discussions as we hate breaking B/C compatibility of our third-party plugins. So we have been working on developing a legacy layer that should (this is the plan) handle any php related CB API inconsistencies found in third-party CB plugins.

This is a very important aspect that has delayed CB 2.0 RC but in the long run it will keep everyone happy, because the goal is now to have a CB 2.0 release that will not break B/C with existing CB plugins. So sites should be able to upgrade from CB 1.9.1 to CB 2.0 without breaking already installed CB plugins.

Hope this addresses your initial question.

Regarding your response to Kyle, to be fair we cannot give any suggestions on what a third party developer needs to change in their code if we do not know what is broken. And to take this a step further, we cannot comment even on current broken code in third party plugins because of work in progress we are in the middle of that is trying to ensure B/C. So basically any existing breaks in third party add-ons with CB 2.0 b4 will most likely not exist in the next CB 2.0 b5 or RC releases.

I hope this helps and clarifies things better.

P.S. Kyle is working very hard on pushing CB 2.0 forward while helping on these forums also. His answer was correct and he did hint about our legacy layer work. He just didn't spend extra time to give a more in depth analysis.

With respect, does anybody actually read the questions? Having paid for Developer support and presumably passed some basic test of commitment. I KNOW that 2.x is beta, it is all over it. I said my site was a long way from production. So please credit me some common sense. My only post to date was to say the hwdmedia did work fine with the beta release. Now it does not, I know it will likely take the developer some time to get it working, said that in my last post. I only asked for a bit of help as to your professional views on what might have become broken, it may not be much and something I can fix, it is a simple plug-in. All you gave me was a slam down for even using your dam code. Talk about confidence in your beta test community. I wish I could remove some Karma from your total. This is a developer forum, I believe I should expect better from this part of the community.

As Nick explained I can't possibly know what needs to be fixed in something we did not develop. You also provided no errors, no warnings, nothing for me to go on so I have no idea what about the plugin stopped working.

A plugin marked incompatible is just a warning in backend. We've made major changes to the API and are trying to bring better legacy API support back in, but I can't guarantee in any way that any incompatible plugin will be completely stable or even work; especially 3rd party plugins.

I also am aware you're using a development site and not a production site. I touched base on both developer and production site usage as well as plugin compatibility. The reason I suggested going with CB 1.x then upgrading later is you mentioned being under pressure.

I suggest enable debug mode and maximum error reporting in Joomla global configuration and seeing if your plugin throws any fatal errors. If there is any then please provide them here. It's possible we removed a legacy function that the plugin could have been using that may need to be added back in (I've already added 2 back in that were removed for next release).

Guys, I appreciate you both getting back to me. rather disappointed that you all share so little, almost like you are building secret club, so you may put in a legacy mode to support the investment of old plug-in software. But seems you are less willing to share what the new plugin api is so someone like me can see if I can figure out what changed. I was not asking you to fix the third party plug-in just what general things have changed on the api. We all know that stuff changes, just like in Joomla. But at least they provided information about how their interfaces changed, what they dropped and what replaced things.
As for development/production. I started this new site at the time of the first release, I had about a year to get it in production, your provisional timeframes at the rather grand announcement of the new 2.x was not suggesting such a long time to production. All I see Kyle doing is telling people to use the old stuff kind of suggesting that 2.x might take a lot longer to finish. What are the current time estimates??
For my project I will need to write some plug-in features for myself. I have been slowly going through working out how it all works, I chose to do this on 2.x because I know nothing in details about the older version and did not want to have to develop on a platform that you were replacing. I am frustrated by the lack of documentation and have to use reverse engineering what is out there. I am quite good at that and see getting the hwmedia plug-in to work as a further 'tutorial" on how stuff works.
I'll debug the plug-in as soon as I build a pre- beta 4 release and look to see what changed. My initial feel is that the paths used to populate the hwmedia content to the correct place have changed.
I hope to be able to continue to use CD and build some sort of relationship with you guys. My intent is only to get batter at using CD and able to build the functionality I need.