Hi I was wondering what the roadmap for MSM is now that the Package builder is available? Is MSM just included in 6.7 for backwards compatibility?
I was under the impression that package builder was a replacement for MSM, which would provide an easier way to version, manage, and move sites between systems. I was recently informed, after opening up a support ticket, that it’s not really meant for that.
Package builder does not preserve permissions, community visibility, and some of the publishing information when you move items between instances, so it is not a “one click” solution. It turns out you still have to use MSM for certain things.
I think Percussion should fix the holes in the package builder and it would be a great solution for moving CMS configurations from one instance to another.
We’re definitely looking at the Package Builder as the ultimate answer to the complexity that is in MSM. There are certainly ways to use the Package Builder to mitigate (reduce) some of the MSM complexity now, but not everything is there yet.
The real direction here is to enable development/implementation against the CM System to be more agile.
The main area open right now is the “content” which often includes some things like Site definitions, Site Folders, navons, and so forth that are in a grey area between actual “real content” and shall we say “meta content” - information that is stored as items but that describes or dictates the site structure and/or publishing. The ways that real content is managed (atomized, fluid, interchangeable, etc.) are very different than the “meta content” which is managed closer to how the implementation itself is managed (in version control, formal and discrete branches).
The Site Cloning feature is an example where we have started to pull apart these two different types of content. We’re looking along those lines for Packaging.