[Discuss] phpBB Release, Security and Support Plan

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P_I
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Re: [Discuss] phpBB Release, Security and Support Plan

Post by P_I »

Our main forum has been operating for just over 10 years, so we're very familiar with the past release history and I'd agree with your assessment of release naming. The new plan seems to address many of the lessons learned over phpBB's release history. As I said, the theory of the new plan makes a great deal of sense to me.

My background is software development, so I can see things from two perspectives, the development side and the challenges of tying features to specific releases in advance and from the forum owner/administrator side where the challenge becomes getting buy in without knowing the roadmap of new features to expect in each release.

FWIW, I also run MediaWiki on our site and IMHO they do a decent job of keeping the community informed about what new features are coming in the next feature release and roughly when, subject to the caveat that the feature list gets adjusted and isn't final until the software is released.

I would strongly suggest that forum owners/administrators need to be able to map the phpBB release schedule into their own schedule, planning process and needs, which to me indicates the need for the new release, security and support plan to also provide a roadmap. Otherwise, I fear that the community support ecosystem of styles/extensions will again lag, which will cause forum owners/admins to lag in updating, thus defeating the goals of the phpBB development team.

My $0.02 as both a software developer and forum owner/administrator.
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Re: [Discuss] phpBB Release, Security and Support Plan

Post by watisnf.nl »

DavidIQ wrote:
CarpCharacin wrote:so if i have a 3.1 board with a lot of extensions installed, does that mean i could upgrade 3.2 once it is released and everything would still work?
In theory, yes. There might be some needed changes, especially if there are major style changes, but the underlying architecture that makes extensions work, including event existence and locations, should go unchanged from 3.1 forward.

The one likely exception to this is if an extension is relying heavily on the legacy functions, which will obviously be removed from the core product at some point. Extension authors do well in moving away from using those functions, i.e. request_var() and some other functions, and using the available classes that perform the same actions. I don't think I've seen much of this however.
Thanks for you explanation David, I was curious about this as well. Updating from 3.0 to 3.1 is a 'big deal' with the modifications I have. Been planning and testing for my update for a few months now. I wouldn't be happy if a update from 3.1 to 3.2 would be the same struggle as 3.0 to 3.1 :) So I'm glad to hear that this is not the case.

With that said, nice to have some sort of schedule for the phpBB release and EOL. Good that the team decided to inform us about that.
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Re: [Discuss] phpBB Release, Security and Support Plan

Post by david63 »

In regards to extensions for future major versions of phpBB - would it be possible to have a "pre release validation" process? That way extensions could be developed/modified to work with the new version of phpBB and be ready to install almost on release day rather than users having to wait months for extensions to be developed and then validated.

The same would also be useful for styles
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Re: [Discuss] phpBB Release, Security and Support Plan

Post by Ger »

Sajaki wrote:
Currently the planned schedule is as follows:
(snip)
May 2015 - 3.0.x End of Maintenance
Nov 2015 - 3.0.x End of Life, 3.2.0 Release
I find this abit soon considering that alot of people haven't even started looking at 3.1 (myself included).
and
P_I wrote:Given the breakpoint between phpBB 3.0 and 3.1 and the inevitable lag to build up the extension and styles ecosystem, I'm wondering if the gap between 3.1 and 3.2 is a bit too close.
Keep in mind that End of Life is not End of Support. As Naderman said:
naderman wrote:End of Life - End of Life means, that no security patches will be provided anymore. Further this marks the end for extension and style updates. The Extensions and Styles Teams will not validate new updates for this version anymore.

End of Support - End of Support means, that the support forums for the respective version will be closed and questions will not be answered anymore. Currently there are no specific End of Support dates but the Support Team will support the versions at the very least until the End of Life of the respective version. Support may be provided past this point and the support team will give at least 6 months notice before the End of Support for a particular version.
(emphasis mine)
So while no more bug/security fixes will be provided, board owners will still receive a basic level of support.
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Re: [Discuss] phpBB Release, Security and Support Plan

Post by Mess »

I very happy to see the positive steps the dev team are taking in making development more transparent.

Thank you! :)
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Re: [Discuss] phpBB Release, Security and Support Plan

Post by MattF »

The update process for administrators from 3.1. to 3.2 should be just about the same as any 3.1.x to 3.1.y update. It will be nothing like the jump from 3.0 to 3.1. It should hopefully end up being painless and routine for admins. 8-)
david63 wrote:In regards to extensions for future major versions of phpBB - would it be possible to have a "pre release validation" process? That way extensions could be developed/modified to work with the new version of phpBB and be ready to install almost on release day rather than users having to wait months for extensions to be developed and then validated.

The same would also be useful for styles
Both extensions and styles face pretty much the same potential pitfalls when going from 3.1. to 3.2 as they do going from 3.1.x to 3.1.y. There are no "pre-validation" processes for those minor updates. And any author can easily grab a copy of the 3.2 branch off GitHub and test/develop their exts in it already, there really is no need for such thing.

The amount of work to update extensions from 3.1 to 3.2 will be minimal since all core changes affecting extensions are being addressed with backwards compatibility in mind. From 3.0 to 3.1 we moved from having MODs to extensions which meant that (as they were different things) most of these customizations needed rewriting from scratch which required a lot of work. This will be different for future 3.x releases as any changes required to update 3.1 extensions to 3.2 extensions will be small simple fixes.
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Re: [Discuss] phpBB Release, Security and Support Plan

Post by david63 »

One issue with extensions is that some (many?) have an upper version limit set in the composer file of less than 3.2 dev, which if my understanding is correct would mean that they would not work with any 3.2 version
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Re: [Discuss] phpBB Release, Security and Support Plan

Post by MattF »

david63 wrote:One issue with extensions is that some (many?) have an upper version limit set in the composer file of less than 3.2 dev, which if my understanding is correct would mean that they would not work with any 3.2 version
That version in composer.json is purely informational at the moment. It may come into play in 3.2 or later though.
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Re: [Discuss] phpBB Release, Security and Support Plan

Post by joshlind »

Thank you :)
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Re: [Discuss] phpBB Release, Security and Support Plan

Post by ClickClickClick »

The release, security and support time line is a great idea.

Long live phpbb! I installed 3.1 and styled it without issue - running like a dream.
Thank you to the entire community for everyone's hard work.

Now... just ~waiting~ for 4.x :twisted:
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Re: [Discuss] phpBB Release, Security and Support Plan

Post by Kailey »

You're going to be waiting a while. ;)
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Re: [Discuss] phpBB Release, Security and Support Plan

Post by Popp Singh »

There was a list of future versions here thats now gone ---- > https://tracker.phpbb.com/projects/PHPB ... lease-page Can someone please point me at the new location ?
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Re: [Discuss] phpBB Release, Security and Support Plan

Post by DavidIQ »

Popp Singh wrote:There was a list of future versions here thats now gone ---- > https://tracker.phpbb.com/projects/PHPB ... lease-page Can someone please point me at the new location ?
That list, as it is now, is how it should be. The tracker is being used for versions that are being worked on or were worked on before. There isn't really a "set-in-stone" list of future versions. Your best guide is what was already announced.
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Re: [Discuss] phpBB Release, Security and Support Plan

Post by Popp Singh »

Thank you David .

The info that was on that page interests me . I used to look every day . Has the page moved ? If so can someone tell me to where please ?
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Re: [Discuss] phpBB Release, Security and Support Plan

Post by Korkel »

I've got some questions about the 3.0.X versions.

May 2015 - 3.0.x End of Maintenance < Will that mean the Styles/MODs forums will be closed or how must I see this next month?
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