CMSimple_XH–Forum

Hello Community,

I strongly suggest to set forth an end-of-life date for the 1.6 branch, to give our users sufficient time to prepare for the next upgrade. Of course, it makes no sense to drop support for 1.6 before 1.7 will be released, and as it is not clear when that will happen, it is hard to define a fixed date. On the other hand, there is PHP 7 which is scheduled for release in October (I guess it will be delayed, but probably not much). I'd rather won't support the 1.6 branch for PHP 7 (presumably it won't be that hard, but you'll never know). That would imply that we have XH 1.7 ready when PHP 7 is available -- I expect at least a few hosters to switch early after its first GA. That means we should get out XH 1.7 this year.

So I suggest to vote about "Set 1.6 branch EOL to 2015-12-31". The voting options would mean:

• "now": make it so
• "later": set the EOL to 2016-06-30
• "never": set a later EOL (would need a further voting)

Furthermore I suggest to vote about "Deny PHP 7 support for the 1.6 branch". That doesn't mean that the 1.6 branch won't necessarily run under PHP 7, but rather that we explicitely deny any warranty that it will (what might safe us painful work).

That are two votes, but presumably a single discussion thread might suffice.

It will take some time for most hosters before they offer php7. I guess at least a year. My hoster is still on php5.3 with save_mode=on
The popular ecommerce solution Modified has proudly announced that its new version is php5.4 ready.

svasti wrote:It will take some time for most hosters before they offer php7. I guess at least a year.

It seems to me that it will take even much longer for many hosters to offer PHP 7. However, some may be quite fast. Consider http://cmsimpleforum.com/viewtopic.php? ... 240#p37218 where a problem related to PHP 5.5.0 was reported 2 1/2 months after the release of this version.

IMHO a pretty brave decision to drop support for 1.6 even we are far away from a productive 1.7. There are 73 issues on the roadmap. Do we know which core changes have consequences for existing installations. Are we sure, all the important plugins are adopted and ready for 1.7 then?
Our beloved CMS is still a sparetime project for me. I wished I could spend more time, but first the jobs for living have to be done.
regards
manu

but still..Kudos for all who spend their ideas and power to this project

manu wrote:IMHO a pretty brave decision to drop support for 1.6 even we are far away from a productive 1.7. There are 73 issues on the roadmap. Do we know which core changes have consequences for existing installations.

We have done so for 1.5 when 1.6 was still in its very early development -- nearly a year before 1.6 GA. My point of view is that it's important for everybody to schedule such dates as soon as possible for long time planning, and that the final feature set of 1.7 can still be adjusted according to our progress (one of the reasons I prefer to split the voting into "sprints").

It seems to me several other Open Source projects work similar: set a new release date in advance, and see what you're able to do until then. The PHP project has even done that for the next major version (PHP 7): https://wiki.php.net/rfc/php7timeline. Okay, that is about the release date of the next version, and not about the EOL of the current version, but these are always somewhat related, and in our case we should have 1.7 ready when PHP 7 reaches GA, or at least shortly thereafter. It might have been better to actually hold a separate vote on the scheduled release date of 1.7, but it seems to me that we have no leeway for that, anyway.

manu wrote:Are we sure, all the important plugins are adopted and ready for 1.7 then?

No, we are not. However, it makes it easier if the plugin developers are able to plan ahead. Consider the alternative way chosen by CMSimple 4.5. On November, 21 the first beta was released with a note that content.htm has been changed to content.php. Only a week later 4.5 reached GA. That didn't leave much time for any affected extension to catch up.

Anyhow, it might be debatable wich plugins are important, but supposedly all "old" plugins will stop working under PHP 7. I wouldn't be surprised if that'll affect a lot of technically unmaintained CMSimple installations -- it would be nice if we're able to offer them PHP 7 ready alternatives. Not that I'm expecting many to upgrade to CMSimple_XH, though.

cmb wrote:it's important for everybody to schedule such dates as soon as possible for long time planning

I wonder how big the concerned group of "everybody" might be. ???

cmb wrote:CMSimple 4.5. On November, 21 the first beta was released with a note that content.htm has been changed to content.php. Only a week later 4.5 reached GA. That didn't leave much time for any affected extension to catch up.

However this is an absolute one-man-show, extensions from others are invisible, and those from the XH-past which work flawlessly are vigorously discouraged.

svasti wrote:

cmb wrote:it's important for everybody to schedule such dates as soon as possible for long time planning

I wonder how big the concerned group of "everybody" might be. ???

It seems to me that "everybody" are at the very least those users running under a PHP version that won't be supported by XH 1.7 anymore. They may have to change their provider when 1.6 has its EOL -- consider existing contracts.

svasti wrote:

cmb wrote:CMSimple 4.5. On November, 21 the first beta was released with a note that content.htm has been changed to content.php. Only a week later 4.5 reached GA. That didn't leave much time for any affected extension to catch up.

However this is an absolute one-man-show, extensions from others are invisible, and those from the XH-past which work flawlessly are vigorously discouraged.

Yes, indeed -- might not have been the best comparison. Anyhow, if you and others don't like to set forth the 1.6 EOL now, just vote "never".

OT: in 4.5.1 the CMSIMPLE_XH_* constants have been removed. I assume that updating will break sites which are using one of my older plugins. I'm expecting some support requests.

JFTR: I've taken the liberty to change the voted upon EOL date due to the massive delay of XH 1.7 – I've added a year.