Introduction
The community has spoken! In a forum poll I posted, I asked if you wanted to see v11 get released in bleeding edge while it was still in alpha (unstable), or if you wanted us to wait until it was in beta (somewhat more stable). Of those who voted, you unanimously wanted v11 to be released in alpha / as soon as possible. Therefore, I am making preparations now for that to happen.As you might have noticed, Composr 10.0.45 is now out and ready for download / upgrading. This patch release was mainly preparation for when version 11 alpha1 gets released as bleeding edge. This patch release features a guard to prevent accidental installation of addons that belong to v11; v10.0.44 and earlier is not protected against this. While there will be a clear separation on the Compo.sr site for v10 and v11 addons, sometimes we make mistakes as we are only human.
v11 Alpha1 Feature-locked Starting 1st February, 2024
In preparation for the upcoming release of version 11 alpha1 as a built bleeding edge download, this version will be feature-locked as of 1st February, 2024. This means that I will not be implementing any more features into v11 until v11 alpha1 is released. My focus will be shifting away from implementing features and towards completing unit tests and fixing bugs. This process will take some time. And if I add in any more features in the middle of the process, it would require me to repeat some of the tests again.Once v11 alpha1 is up on Compo.sr and available for download / testing, we can then implement more planned features for v11 which will then make it into future alpha versions (alpha2, alpha3, and so on). When Chris and I, and the community, are confident in the v11 feature-set, it will then move on to beta status.
Target Release Date for v11 Alpha1
My current target is 3rd March, 2024. This is, of course, subject to change at any time with or without notice. So please do not treat this as a guarantee.Normally, we operate under the philosophy that it is better not to give target dates and not to scramble to meet said dates if it means a better and more stable product. However, v11 alpha is meant for testing. And I'd like to get it out as soon as possible so [more] members can begin playing around with it (the community seems to agree as well). It's okay if v11 alpha has bugs in it. That's expected and is what the "alpha" in the version means. The sooner it can be accessible almost as easily as v10 is, the sooner we can get more people testing it and thus discover / squash more bugs we might not yet see.
All else I can say is, v11 is coming. And I believe it will be bigger and better than any version to date. Composr v11 is the culmination of over 7 years of work and over 5,600 git commits to date.
Comments
I've been running the current iteration of my main website on v10 for a whopping 7.5 years, and while I've put in a lot of dev work to get it the way I wanted (with help from Chris and other amazing members of the ocPortal/Composr community along the way), I don't really have any complaints about it today. I was excited about v11 years ago, but I'm actually nervous now that it's getting closer to fruition, because it may require me to dive back into Composr deeper than I have in quite a while to make the upgrade and re-apply my customizations.
Of course, software (especially touching the internet) does rot when it's not updated, so it's great that development is moving again. It looks like I didn't comment on the big post back in November, so let me express my gratitude to you (Patrick) as well as Chris for continuing to carry the torch working on Composr after all this time. It's been almost painful seeing all the attempts you guys have made to build an actual development community around the project over the past years (and I'm sorry I couldn't help more with doing that so far). Here's looking to continued development and hopefully future growth.
Yes, I'm hoping by putting alpha on the bleeding edge release cycle, it will enable more people to be able to test it out and play with it. I'm also hoping doing this will give others, such as yourself, ample opportunity to begin checking out v11 and seeing what would need to be done to upgrade your v10 site to v11.
I think the biggest change with v11 is themeing. While there are some API changes, v11 had its default theme massively rewritten to be more secure, responsive, and modular (thanks to former dev Salman). I made some changes myself as well such as fixing up the theme wizard's color equation system to work better / be more accessible. I also fixed up dark mode. It's not perfect, but it is now a lot better than it used to be.
There should be quite a bit of time between alpha1 and the first stable version of v11 to prepare for upgrades. I anticipate there will be at least a year between alpha1 and the first stable version, though probably longer. There is unfortunately only so much Chris and I can do at a time.
Thank you for your gratitude. I do hope over time adaptation of Composr can grow again, and in-turn, community involvement and development. Tracker activity has been on the rise in the last few months (not just from myself or Chris), which is a good thing.