VM2 and j1.6

[Milbo]

Testing the last j1.6.3 we run into completly new problems with j1.6. We get a lot new errors, which are mostly in the libraries of joomla

While I was thinking about how to handle the fast changes in the j1.6 family, I found this article from Fotis about the j1.6 situation.

http://blog.joomlaworks.gr/why-were-not-porting-k2-to-joomla-16-the-life#more

I didnt spoke with our j1.6 developers, but I think they see it simular. It is almost impossible to hold a release date, when the joomla guys make their changes so fast  . So the decision for now is that we won't support j1.6. So please don't report anylonger bugs related to j1.6.x.

VM2 is afaik working already on j1.6.1 ! But not higher.

So VM2 wont support j1.6, maybe directly j1.7  .

[jenkinhill]

Nicholas at Akeeba has also last week reported considerable problems with Joomla 1.6 and has withdrawn active 1.6 support.
https://www.akeebabackup.com/home/item/1093-joomla-16-will-be-partially-supported.html

[red2678]

SUX! I just started a 1.6 site and am starting to seriously regret it!

[jjk]

Well - I suppose there was or still is some frustration among developers about things like this one:
http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/joomla/tracker/?action=TrackerItemEdit&tracker_item_id=25657

[jenkinhill]

And even more complications for template developers with J1.6: http://www.rockettheme.com/forum/index.php?f=497&t=129860&rb_v=viewtopic

With J1.7 due in 2-3 months and 1.8 at the beginning of next year I am starting to wonder how 3rd party developers can find the time to fully test their components with every single Joomla update, and yet still find time to continue their own component development.

[jjk]

And even more complications for template developers...

...IMHO they would not have that problem if they were actually developing "templates" instead of moving more and more component/module/plugin functions into what they call templates. My experience so far is that life is a little bit easier (less conflicts) if you don't use them. Personally I tend to think that in the long run it is a good idea to avoid templates that come with more than i.e. 150kb of code...

(BTW - I just had my template intended to be used on my J1.6.3/VM2 site ready to go...  )

Concerning J1.6.3 and future versions I suppose that there won't be any more rapid changes like in the past few weeks.
I'm not a developer, but after reading the latest contribution to the developers blog from Mark Dexter, I suppose the third party developers now can expect a more smooth J1.6.x development process for the next year or so...
http://community.joomla.org/blogs/leadership/1442-wanted-new-features-for-version-17.html

[impleri]

It seems to me that in some cases, this is just devs whinging that they have to re-think their projects. For example, K2 really does seem to be complaining that 1.6 has an ACL solely because they made one for their component. For me, that's not a good reason to not upgrade and reminds me of a time a few years back when phpBB 3.0 was released (and the Categories Hierarchy mod which had many of the features long before 3.0 chose to remain with the 2.0 series). Sadly, phpBB is still around and CH isn't and there never was an 'official' upgrade path to map CH's features to phpBB3's.

The current situation with 3PD sounds a lot like the CH community and unless one plans to fork Joomla (something that CH started to do), users won't stick around forever. From what I have seen (as a CH contributor!), many users will see j1.5 and think 'obsolete' and wonder why a major addon hasn't 'upgraded' yet. They'll allow some dev time to 'catch up' after a release, but that only goes for so long. Secondly, new users won't be using j1.5. In my opinion (which might be in the minority here), we should really start focusing on 1.6 and adding backwards compatibility with 1.5 rather than 1.5 and forwards compatibility with 1.6. If we don't change our mindset here, we'll slowly slip into obsoletion as Joomla pushes new releases and we're stuck on 1.5 (as we were with j1.0/j1.1).

And before I get criticised for what I'm saying, please be aware that I'm doing my hardest to get vm2 working perfectly with j1.6. I'm aware that we're wanting to get a new beta release out soon and can't promise 1.6, but I'm committing myself to promise 1.6 compatibility by the gold release of vm2.

[jjk]

...please be aware that I'm doing my hardest to get vm2 working perfectly with j1.6 ...

Thanks!
BTW - Last week I discovered the first "extension" for VM2(Beta3):
http://www.joomlack.fr/en/Joomla-extensions/Menu/patch-maximenu-virtuemart.html 

[Milbo]

but I'm committing myself to promise 1.6 compatibility by the gold release of vm2.

This sounds well but I fear, when we release VM2 final in juli or so then you can already start to port for j1.7

[impleri]

This sounds well but I fear, when we release VM2 final in juli or so then you can already start to port for j1.7

Or you can finally decide to fork from Joomla and not worry about their release schedule. It's a harsh world out there and either we keep up or quickly become outdated and obsolete. Joomla changed their development to a time-based cycle (as does Ubuntu, WordPress, etc). Even Debian claims to have a time-based cycle (though its period is much longer). We can either whinge or do something. I prefer the latter.

[Fotis Evangelou]

@impleri

For example, K2 really does seem to be complaining that 1.6 has an ACL solely because they made one for their component.

That's really your assumption. K2 is in the final phase of testing for 1.6 compatibility and will be presented in public on J and Beyond 2011.

Your statement also shows you don't really know K2. K2's ACL has always been for the frontend and even now, far exceeds Joomla! 1.6's stock ACL options. K2's ACL is easy to understand and setup. Joomla! 1.6's ACL (for frontend options) is incomprehensible the least!

I fully agree with Max Milbers here. VM is a free product and the developers are not making any money off VM. Therefore they should not flip out and support Joomla! every 6 months. Support the LTS version which is 1.5.

K2 may be compatible with 1.6 very soon, but a) don't think we'll be suggesting people they use 1.6 for production websites and b) I really doubt power users will even think of switching to 1.6...

Just to clarify, we did not "flip out" either when J1.6 was out. We run a poll and the VAST majority of K2 users said they were not "burning" to switch to 1.6. And that is true. Websites are not desktop computers. If something works just fine, there is no reason to upgrade it to a completely new platform JUST to be able to use 1 new addition only. That's insane...

[impleri]

That's really your assumption. K2 is in the final phase of testing for 1.6 compatibility and will be presented in public on J and Beyond 2011.

You're right. It is my assumption based on that one post above. I have no idea about K2 for Joomla (I've been a user of the K2 template engine in WP since it's early heydays, so for me K2 is always a WP thing).

Your statement also shows you don't really know K2. K2's ACL has always been for the frontend and even now, far exceeds Joomla! 1.6's stock ACL options. K2's ACL is easy to understand and setup. Joomla! 1.6's ACL (for frontend options) is incomprehensible the least!

This is the exact same arguments made with phpBB2's Categories Hierarchy mod and phpBB3. It might be easier, more intuitive, really cool, whatever. What I read in the post saying K2 is removing support from J1.6 was that Joomla's ACL was encroaching on K2's turf. Joomla's response was pretty clear: K2 (and for that matter VM and other components) are building off of Joomla, not vice versa, and if components want to keep to that, they'll need to live with the changes and be involved in J!'s development process. Cringing every time a new X.Y version is released is not beneficial to any community -- sure, it may have broke something as no dev is perfect and sometimes core devs think that they've communicated well enough to everyone (i.e. 3rd party
devs) that something is going to change, such as the autoloading of MT in the backend (one line of code!) because it's not always necessary. The fact that 3PD were using that bug (which was filed in February -- 10+ weeks ago) to their sloppy advantage isn't a valid argument (caveat: there was a good argument that in calling JToolBar functions --- which depend on MT -- not working is). The fact that Joomla switched to a time-based release cycle also isn't an argument. It's a quick turn around, but they're not the first to do it (WP and Ubuntu, as I've already mentioned, have done it for at least 4 years).

I fully agree with Max Milbers here. VM is a free product and the developers are not making any money off VM. Therefore they should not flip out and support Joomla! every 6 months. Support the LTS version which is 1.5.

And Joomla isn't a free product? Supporting the LTS version is grand, but that doesn't mean support it to the exclusion of any newer ones. As your first point has shown (and as I have been working on for the past 9 hours), J 1.6.3 isn't suddenly breaking things because of decisions to change the API. The 1.6 API has been pretty clearly defined and blaming 3PD bugs on the next API isn't an argument. I keep going through the diff logs to see where problems 'suddenly' come up and, ironically, it's not Joomla 1.6.3 (or 1.6.2)! Sure, Joomla changed some things from 1.5.x to 1.6.x and it might be just 'to use 1 new addition', but that's also why the timeframe is so short: each cycle adds 'only' 1-2 new features so that (1) it doesn't force a rewrite of a component every time and (2) end users see an active development cycle. Again, look at WordPress: they release a new X.Y roughly every 6 months. Every big release has a few new features, but nothing that really wrecks all plugins. Guess what? That's what Joomla wants to do!

Just to clarify, we did not "flip out" either when J1.6 was out. We run a poll and the VAST majority of K2 users said they were not "burning" to switch to 1.6. And that is true. Websites are not desktop computers. If something works just fine, there is no reason to upgrade it to a completely new platform JUST to be able to use 1 new addition only. That's insane...

Why do you keep saying 'flip out' that way (just curious as I don't see that in my posts)?
I agree that websites aren't desktop computers. My point is that if 3PD are always lagging behind 1-2 release cycles from the core, they're not going to get new users. New users install whatever's current. I've seen this with the phpBB community and (especially) the Categories Hierarchy community. What's seems to be common in both scenarios can be interpreted as a step towards obsoletion because some 3PD think they're 'too big to fail'. Guess again. Someone else will (it's not a matter of if but when) start to do things faster and just as free, then we're left with maintaining and writing a component for ourselves and our own little insular group (which is what happened with CH, moreso when it decided to fork to phpBB2 into the still-unreleased CH-BB). Personally, I like VM too much to see that happen to it (and to see it happen again). It's that's crazy, then yes I am.

[jjk]

He-He  

I think all the above has become part of any huge open source community. There is a continious process of taking out some pieces of the (Joomla-) puzzle and replacing it with newer pieces. And after spending  a lot of time to put the puzzle (a website, component, etc.) together again and pat yourself on the back for the good work - guess what will happen. New versions of the software pieces you are using will be released and you start over again with looking at the changes (i.e. with something like WinMerge), make all necessary adjustments, spend a lot of time with testing, then look at the beautiful result and ...start over again or take a break and fall behind...

[Fotis Evangelou]

@impleri Really... whatever...

[Rob Joyce]

1.6 is only a stepping stone to 1.7
It is designed to get all developers components inline to work properly with 1.7
There is no real point in getting the component to SPECIFICALLY work with 1.6 as 1.7 is due out soon anyway. So the point of trying to make it compatible with 1.6 is mute.
I'm on the bug squad for 1.6, there are still tons of bugs going through and many features that still aren't implemented.
I think they are trying to get all the features implemented in time for 1.7 so that they ahve a full product in the end.