@Hussain: Sorry if the development path isn’t clear. 1.6 becomes 1.7; 1.7 becomes 1.8. 1.5 is maintained while this is happening. You will be able to jump from 1.5 to 1.8, or you can follow the path to 1.8 via 1.6 and 1.7.

The reason for maintaining 1.5 while having short releases for 1.6 and 1.7 is so that development is happening while those who need long-term stability can also have that. Joomla’s release cycle is patterned after Ubuntu’s.

@PatVB: The template clubs are, for the most part, keeping up with the development of Joomla. 1.7 is currently in development. I do not expect templates will change much from 1.6 to 1.7. However, templates are VERY different between 1.5 and 1.6.

@diver165: The Joomla project can be pretty bad at communicating their intentions. One of their problems is communicating across too many channels, and then no one can find what was said later. The release schedule is very much in the open, and the development process is as well. This post is a good summary of all of the places where things were said about 1.7 (and later) development:

http://people.joomla.org/groups/viewdiscussion/1070-Beyond+16.html?groupid=458

@chris: Your summary of the intentions of the Joomla project is correct. The theory is that a 1.6.3 migration to 1.7.0 is a “one click” process. However, the project does have a history of having some difference between theory and reality. The leadership knows that easy migrations are critical to making this work, so they are working on making the migration process easy… at least for core features.

As always, the tricky part is with the extensions. I am not a developer, and I can’t say whether the migration for 1.6 to 1.7 from a 3rd party extension point of view will be trivial or a nightmare. It may even depend on the extension. Pay close attention to what’s being discussed over the next 2 months to get a better picture of what’s happening.

The Joomla community has been burned by migrations before, and they are concerned about charging clients lots of money to complete tasks that are, in theory, supposed to be easy. We will have a much better picture about how this plan works going forward, after the 1.7 release.

@Hussain: I don’t know whether 1.6 extensions will work for 1.7 or not. Right now, they are picking features to include in 1.7 and starting the debug process for the July release. We should know the answer to this question shortly.

Thanks all,
Jen

when you talk about security updates do you mean that templates and extensions developed for 1.6.X do not need to be updated to work for 1.7.X or 1.8.X? Is it that what you mean? Do you mean extensions developed for 1.6.X automatically will work for 1.7.X?

Please explain, the answer is indeed important to us… It is updating extensions and templates that concerns us. Thank you.

First, the only support or “development” for J1.5 will be security updates. It is COMPLETELY normal to release and develop these while working on 1.6. Also, 1.6 is no longer being “developed” in the sense that they are adding features. My understanding is that, they are only doing security updates for that as well (at least from J1.6.3 on). they are really only “developing” 1.7. And even then, you could just as well call it J1.6.XX. It is just a number. The idea is that they are adding new features every 6 months with security updates along the way.

It seems like a MAJOR misunderstanding and mis-use of words to say that the short-term releases will “not be supported” after a certain date. I think this is to say that they will no longer be releasing security updates for it. That is because instead of the security update, you just need to update to the latest Joomla (i.e. J1.6.3 to J1.7.0, etc.). The word is that it should be as simple to upgrade from J1.6.2 to J1.6.3 as it will be from J1.6.3 to J1.7.0.

Am I wrong? Do I misunderstand?

The only real uncertainty and confusion I have are concerning the new features released from say a J1.6 to a J1.7. Will these added features make many J1.6 templates, extensions, plugins, etc. goof up when moving to 1.7?

It actually seems like an exciting plan, I am just concerned that the Joomla community doesn’t truly understand it and is not getting behind it. This will just grid-lock things. I say we do what it takes to stay up with the J! development.

What are you thoughts?

Chris

How can you still develop Joomla 1.5 and Joomla 1.6 at the same time secretely developing Joomla 1.7? How can you honestly put out a link to Joomla 1.6 on your website and tout it to be the latest and best Joomla available, but have secret plans to only support it for 6 months? Why go through the trouble of releasing it in the first place!!! All you do by releasing something like this is waste time supporting and patching CMS that is marked for end of life.

I agree with the previous posters, this will be a total nightmare in keeping up with the various extensions and templates. I honestly don’t know what to tell me customers. Some want the ACL functionality but I don’t want to sell them a site that I know will be end of life by the time I’m finished.

Lets here something official on the Joomla web site. Maybe I’ve just missed it.

I still have a few sites in Joomla 1.0 because they are still working well and earning money, but now are really starting to show their age. Waiting for 1.8 seems like a good idea. What are others doing?

Pat Vanden Bosche

If Joomla 1.5 is still will be developed parallel to 1.6 and then parallel to 1.7 and then all the garbage will be migrated to the heroic version 1.8 then my stupid question is:

Why releasing 1.6 and 1.7? why not just working with 1.5 until a stable version of so called 1.8 is released? What is the meaning of these short period 1.6 and 1.7 releases? Why all these parallel developments and confusions?

/Hussain