Support for Jellyfin 10.10, 10.11, & 12.x

[damontecres]

12.0-RC2

Jellyfin server 12.0-RC2 was published today!

I am doing a basic run through with the latest Wholphin develop build, v1.0.2-16, on a 12.0-RC2 server and haven't encountered any issues so far.

Background

Wholphin currently uses the SDK for JF 10.10.x since some users haven't been able to upgrade to 10.11 due to performance issues. 12.0 seems to resolve many of the performance issues and furthermore, the Jellyfin team only officially supports the latest version.

Give the level of support and that many user's expose Jellyfin to the internet, it is important to use the latest versions that include security fixes.

Plan

The tentative plan is to update the SDK used in Wholphin to 12.0 within a couple weeks after 12.0's official release.

At that point, Wholphin will create a patch release (eg 1.0.3) prior to the SDK upgrade and a minor release (eg 1.1.0) after. Then Wholphin will strive to stay up to date with each new release of the latest server's SDK.

Realistically, updating the SDK should not immediately break anything in Wholphin when used on an older server. The server APIs are generally pretty stable and backwards compatible. But if Wholphin is updated to leverage any newer server APIs, that could cause errors when used with older server versions.

Call to action

I'd like to hear what Wholphin's users think about this plan, and if anyone has tried 12.0, how it working for you?

[mschumacher69]

I'd like to hear what Wholphin's users think about this plan, and if anyone has tried 12.0, how it working for you?

Sounds like a great plan. Considering the server's API are backwards compatible, waiting a couple of weeks after 12.0's official release sounds reasonable and by the time Wholphin is updated to leverage any newer server APIs, everyone should have already upgraded to 12.0.

[Kawalskint]

I've been running Jellyfin Server 12.0-RC2 on Windows with the develop/ac3-test build and haven't encountered any compatibility issues so far.

[mrfoggg]

I updated the server right after the RC2 came out, and everything still works great. Overall, your client is the best. I have all the available ones installed, but they're all inferior to Whoolphin.

[damontecres]

Realistically, updating the SDK should not immediately break anything in Wholphin when used on an older server. The server APIs are generally pretty stable and backwards compatible.

Turns out this is NOT correct. I was testing an update to use the kotlin sdk 1.9.0.beta.2 for 12.0-RC3 and many parts of Wholphin do not work with an 10.11.x server. It looks like there are new required fields when deserializing the server's responses which an older server does not supply.

The reverse setup works well (ie older client SDK with a newer server). So I think I will adjust the plan to wait longer than just a couple weeks (maybe more like 4-6 weeks) after the official 12.0 release to update Wholphin's client SDK so user's have time to update their servers and any significant issues in 12.0 can be found.