Inability to move files and libraries is a critical flaw standing in opposition to development goals

[wolterkam]

Jellyfin is primarily used with local filesystem libraries, not immutable, curated backends. Those libraries will move between drives, be reorganized, repaired, or migrated as disks fail or fill up. Losing all watch state because a library path changes is unacceptable behavior for a local media server.

If this is considered “solved” solely by preserving mount points in Docker, then the native server releases outside of Docker fundamentally fail to address this and as such should NOT be regarded to be functionally on par with the Docker releases, if not outright "broken".

[TheMelmacian]

In the current implementation there are many limitations that make it difficult to change the folder structure without loosing some metadata. Or you have to manipulate the database directly.

Watch state (for one user) can be saved in nfo files (settings -> libraries -> nfo settings; nfo files need to be enabled for the respective library).
With nfo files enabled, and saving pictures alongside the media files, it's relatively easy to move folders around since the parser will pick up the info in the nfo file. But everything that is not saved in the nfo file will be lost: manually merged files, manually created collections, watch state for other users etc.