Viewing unattached attachments results in 404

[ryan]

Got to Media -> Library. Click on the "View" link of an Unattached item. Note that a 404 results. In 2.9 the attachment page was displayed rather than issuing a 404.

This is due to the modified post status checking in the "Check post status to determine if post should be displayed" block of WP_Query::get_posts(). Unattached attachments have a post status of 'inherit' but a post_parent of 0, meaning there is no parent from which to inherit status. In 2.9 the implicit status for unattached attachments was published. In 3.0 the implicit status is private. Which is preferred?

[ryan]

If we want unattached attachments to be public, get_post_status() could return 'publish' if the status of a post is inherit, the post type is attachment, and the parent is 0.

[jane]

I like the old 2.7 way. It is established behavior and it's the way we should trend, in anticipation of ultimately having better media features. The whole "you can upload an image without attaching it to a post" was a big deal in 2.7, and this would be a step backward from it. The only thing that would be good to add would be the ability to give a media file a status (draft/published), but obviously 3.0 is too far gone for that, so we should consider it in 3.1.

[ryan]

I think, ultimately, we may want to ditch the 'inherit' status, at least for unattached attachments. Rolling with the implementation noted above.

[ryan]

(In [14087]) Assume unattached attachments are published. fixes #12999