5.7 Upgrade Path / Migration Path
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C5 Core Team,
First off i'd like to say that as a developer i'm thrilled to see some of the changes being made in the core in 5.7 (especially the sunset of ADODB).
That said, I was taken a bit aback when the video eluded to not having a real plan for any sort of upgrade path or migration (or maybe I am misunderstanding?) Working with many clients, we often end up directing them to C5 because of the great user interface and the extensibility that exists for us as developers. However, if no direct upgrade path exists, I'm concerned for the business implications this may cause.
I know that especially for many new concrete5 users who just recently got their site up and running and potentially paid out decent money to have add-ons / packages built, and now being told they are essentially using an obsolete system that is going to require more time and money will be extremely frustrating.
I guess as a developer I understand the need for these changes, Concrete5 has been around for awhile now and needs to make some changes to be able to move forward and stay on the leading edge of things. But at the same time it is extremely hard to tell new clients with a clear conscience that they should use C5, and then they will have to pay us more to upgrade them in 3 or 6 or 12 months or whenever this gets rolled out.
Is there anything that you would offer up to give us some peace of mind? Or could you tell me that I've completely misunderstood what's going to need to happen post 5.6?
First off i'd like to say that as a developer i'm thrilled to see some of the changes being made in the core in 5.7 (especially the sunset of ADODB).
That said, I was taken a bit aback when the video eluded to not having a real plan for any sort of upgrade path or migration (or maybe I am misunderstanding?) Working with many clients, we often end up directing them to C5 because of the great user interface and the extensibility that exists for us as developers. However, if no direct upgrade path exists, I'm concerned for the business implications this may cause.
I know that especially for many new concrete5 users who just recently got their site up and running and potentially paid out decent money to have add-ons / packages built, and now being told they are essentially using an obsolete system that is going to require more time and money will be extremely frustrating.
I guess as a developer I understand the need for these changes, Concrete5 has been around for awhile now and needs to make some changes to be able to move forward and stay on the leading edge of things. But at the same time it is extremely hard to tell new clients with a clear conscience that they should use C5, and then they will have to pay us more to upgrade them in 3 or 6 or 12 months or whenever this gets rolled out.
Is there anything that you would offer up to give us some peace of mind? Or could you tell me that I've completely misunderstood what's going to need to happen post 5.6?
1. 5.6 LTS
There will be a long term support plan for 5.6 so clients just discovering c5 will not have an obsolete system. This will cover security fixes, bug fixes, etc. minor fixes but no new features. I've understood that this is 100% confirmed.
It might be also possible that the 5.6 LTS would have community-driven support so that a couple of members from the community would be managing that branch and the core team would only fix some major security issues there and be the ones to push out the "official" update releases.
From the discussion I've understood that 5.6 would be supported for around 2 years. However, I've not seen any confirmation on this from the core team.
2. 5.7 Migration Path
There will actually be a migration path to 5.7. They call it "migration" for a reason because they expect that there will be technical work related to each and every migration.
I would also GUESS that there would be an official documentation on "Upgrading from 5.6 to 5.7".
The parts that might break from your old site when migrating to 5.7:
- Layouts. They completely renewed, so the old layouts will not work. All your blocks that were in the old layouts, will just be dumped into some area (i.e. they will not automatically convert to the new layouts).
- Obsolete add-ons, i.e. add-ons that are not and will not be supported for 5.7
- Some of your custom code (controllers/libraries/models/etc.) relying on the internal API, if those parts have changed in the core. E.g. the code consistency is improving as we move forward, so e.g. some methods might have been marked as static (as they should) and if you've used them in a non-static way in your custom code, that code would break.
Otherwise, you should be able to migrate other parts of the system to 5.7.
All this information is from a similar thread from the Leaders forum. For those with access there, please check:
http://www.concrete5.org/developers/pro-accounts/community-leaders-...