Preparation for 2.0

[olivermrbl]

Things are progressing well toward Medusa 2.0, and we are excited to share an early preview version for experimentation and exploration purposes next week.

The preview version will not be production-ready. However, you can start developing with it to get acquainted with Medusa 2.0.

Medusa 2.0 introduces architectural changes to our product, primarily driven by fully decoupling our modules to eliminate interdependencies between them. This new architecture will enable greater composability, use of standalone modules, and support for incremental adoption. Refer to our recent Recap for more details about the architectural changes and other features in 2.0.

Our new architecture has led to several changes to our open-source repository, including:

• Reorganization of packages
• Deprecation of plugins
• Introduction of an LTS branch

This document is here to help you understand the implications of these changes, which have taken effect today.

Reorganization of packages

We will use Medusa 2.0 as an opportunity to improve the discoverability and navigation of our repository. This is causing structural changes to our folder structure.

Going forward, the repository will be structured as follows:

/packages
  /modules
    /cart
    /product
    ...

  /admin
    /dashboard

  /core
    /workflows-sdk
    /modules-sdk
    /medusa-js
    ...

Many packages have been left out for the sake of brevity. The purpose is to illustrate the new subfolders in /packages.

This project restructuring is subject to change as we move closer to the official release, but you should consider this a good proxy for what it will look like.

Deprecation of plugins

We have reviewed our suite of officially supported plugins and decided to deprecate several. Some are broken. Some will not be supported in 2.0. And some are deprecated to eliminate a maintenance burden for our core team.

If you wish to take over the maintenance of any of the below-mentioned plugins, please leave a comment, and we can discuss.

The following plugins will be deprecated and removed from our repository in 2.0:

• medusa-source-shopify
• gatsby-source-medusa
• medusa-payment-adyen
• medusa-plugin-economic
• medusa-plugin-mailchimp
• medusa-plugin-twilio-sms

The following plugins will be migrated to a different package in 2.0:

• medusa-file-local → @medusajs/file-local
• medusa-file-s3 → @medusajs/file-s3
• medusa-file-spaces → @medusajs/file-s3
• medusa-file-minio → @medusajs/file-s3
• medusa-fulfillment-manual → @medusajs/fulfillment-manual
• medusa-fulfillment-webshipper → @medusajs/fulfillment-webshipper
• medusa-payment-klarna → @medusajs/payment-klarna
• medusa-payment-manual → @medusajs/payment-manual
• medusa-payment-stripe → @medusajs/payment-stripe
• medusa-payment-paypal → @medusajs/payment-paypal

Migrating from the existing plugins to the new should be more or less frictionless, as the functionality stays the same. Only the configuration in medusa-config.js will change; we will share this later.

Consider both lists non-exhaustive, as these are also subject to change before the official release.

Introduction of v1.x branch

From today, we will no longer actively update Medusa v1.x with new features and/or larger improvements. Our core team will only patch security vulnerabilities and critical issues. External contributors are still more than welcome to introduce improvements and fix bugs. However, such PRs will be considered low priority for our team to review and will take longer to land in an official release than previously.

All changes to versions 1.x should use a new maintenance branch: v.1x.

Going forward, there will be two release tracks:

• develop → preview releases of Medusa 2.0
• v1.x → official releases of Medusa 1.x

If you wish to resolve an issue in v1.x, please ensure your changes and pull request use v1.x as the base branch.

A comment on currently open PRs

If you have an open PR to develop, we kindly ask you to rebase off of v1.x and change the base branch on the pull request. We will attend to it as soon as possible.

Please don’t hesitate to ask questions or voice concerns about these new initiatives. We will address them to the best of our ability.

[minhchu]

Hi @olivermrbl

Thanks for your amazing work.

Could you take a look at this issue: #7156
It is blocking us to production

[genox]

Hi @olivermrbl

I wonder if medusa v2 will bring any new features to the admin, in terms of editing product information (like localised description and titles, multiple image variants, etc). I am currently facing the decision whether I should focus on moving catalog management entirely to a headless cms insteaf of extending core functionality of medusa, since it is kinda hard to extend the existing views in the admin and I would rather not build complicated product entities in medusa v1 as this has proven more complex in the past than I was hoping.

[olivermrbl]

So, if you could provide a improved documentation with v2, it will be awesome!

@rk12129, we are working on something big for the 2.0 documentation. Hope to share more very soon. I noted down your request and we will consider it for an example implementation.

[olivermrbl]

@genox, thank you very much for your input – really appreciate it. I'll try to comment on a few of the items in-line here:

"Schema in code"

This is on the drawing board. Still early days, so I can't share anything yet, but we are exploring this as we speak. If there are any specific tools you would like us to consider in this context, please let me know, as now would be a very good time to have that.

A more complete Admin experience

What specifically are you looking for? Our UI Routes and Widgets allow you to extend the admin dashboard with entire domains, e.g. blog posts. You should be able to build the features you would otherwise need a CMS for – naturally not as feature-rich, but it should take you pretty far.

Better logging, better diagnostics

Will be improved in 2.0!

[bert-rstk]

@olivermrbl for a schema-in-code CMS I'd suggest looking closely at PayloadCMS.

It aligns with MedusaJS "philosophically" in many aspects: TypeScript first, headless and modular, customizable Admin and UI components, lightweight footprint for serverless deployments to Vercel, closely integrates with NextJS and RSC (see recent 3.0 release). A noteworthy difference is that it was built on MongoDB, with PostgreSQL only added recently. Drizzle is the ORM for PostgreSQL, which differs from Medusa's move from TypeORM to MikroORM.

I agree with @genox that CMS-like functionality is key to easily create and extend custom attributes/entities in Medusa. IMHO this not only helps compete with Shopify on features (custom fields), but supports Medusa's broader mission to offer the most easily customizable "full-stack" e-commerce platform. The upcoming workflow engine/UI is a great example of "lowering the barrier" to customization 💪

[HarleySalas]

I totally agree here. I've been using Payload a lot lately and I'm planning to make a 2-way sync plugin, though it'd be nice to see a more community driven, or officially supported approach to this. I totally agree that it's best to have content management systems do what they do best; content management and medusa what it does best; e-commerce. I want to see both Medusa and Payload grow and as it stands, while Medusa and Payload are both very powerful, it's still quite intimidating, especially for less experienced developers to tackle these sort of things. I'd love to see what beautiful thing could be born when the experts of these platforms either build a plugin, or perhaps even just make some great documentation that shows the best approaches on how to do it.

[bert-rstk]

Integrating Payload -or a preferred CMS- as an official plugin in Medusa would be great. I believe many Medusa users connect it to an external CMS to build custom entities for their content (CMS) and product (PIM) needs. Payload could be built as a module via its Local API, for a closer and latency-free integration.

@genox raises a more general point about the DX of a CMS and app framework like Payload vs. Medusa:

"Schema in code" like strapi, payload, sanity and others. No need to manually add api endpoints, types, validity checks, UI. data import and export.

This is key to offer the most easily customizable commerce framework. Medusa already has incredible commerce modules and a "full-stack" commerce platform (backend+admin+storefront). But one could argue that launching and customizing an e-commerce platform on Payload is easier.

Taking this even further, one can envision a future where non-developers use the framework to build custom entities, create workflows and can do most things via the Admin UI. A good example of this is Directus's Data Studio and Flows (very similar to Medusa Workflows).

Super excited about the direction of Medusa and the upcoming 2.0 release! 🪼🚀

[awkward-minion]

It is great effort to put in this project. I appreciate it.

1. Module / package decoupling is really a needed feature.
2. Package re-organization is not necessarily needed IMO, fancy package naming can be done later after a year. No problem with that.
3. Leaving previous stable release (1.x) with out any well maintained version (2.x-rc) will create a bad impression on the project trustiness with in community or developers. (Im already feeling it after started using it for almost 7 days).
   3.1. Leaving open issues on v1.x and assigning low priority makes it worse.
   3.2. Marking low priority on community developers PR's is really a bad. it discourages them.

Thank you 😊

[luluhoc]

@awkward-minion Now the PR's getting closed for 1.x, I rewrote the SendGrid plugin to typescript, and it was just closed. It could have been merged to 1.x tho...

[NicolasGorga]

@olivermrbl First of all, thanks for the great work.

Will there be more customization possibilities with 2.0?

Things I think are necessary in order to use the shipped Admin UI in a multi vendor marketplace env:

• Show hide left vertical menu items based on a user role (or any other logic that is relevant to the business). Example: Vendors should be able to see a subset of the items that an Admin of the system (like me), which should be able to see and configure everything related to the system and the individual Vendors

• Add elements to the left vertical menu: Correct me if i'm wrong (I've only been using Medusa for less than a week), but i think there is no way to add items to the left hand side vertical menu, to route to custom pages. Example: as an Admin, i would like to add a "Vendors" item, that navigates me to a page i would create to see the registered Vendors, to approve them or dissaprove them, as well as configure things like sale_fee, as for one Vendor i woul maybe want to configure a 10% fee to every purchase, will another might have a 15% fee.

• Customize the route that should be navigated after login: right now it is fixed to the dashboard. Example: If a Vendor tries to log in, but hasn't been approved by me yet, they should be navigated to a '/pending-verification' route. Tied to this, the point below.

• Ability to define guards for routes shipped with Admin UI: Example: If a Vendor that hasn't been approved by me yet tries to navigate to any route, i would like them to be redirected automaticall to a route like '/pending-verification'

If you need any more input regarding the limitations I have identified for Marketplace you have my full attention.

Greetings,
Nicolas

[danvayn]

You should share these in discord.

@olivermrbl did you see this reply

[HarleySalas]

Perhaps it's already possible, but I'd love to see some features able to be disabled in the admin ui.

For example, we often have clients with simpler requirements. Perhaps they don't need something like pricing overrides, or gift cards. I don't like shipping anything unless every feature is usable. I hate the idea of "heres your dashboard, just don't touch that button," or "that doesn't work properly." Even Regions are something that many of our clients don't need. It'd be nice to just throw a default region in and delete the concept from inside the dashboard.

Perhaps there is already an easy way to do it, I'm just unaware.