Hi Tom, Tom Boutell wrote: > I understand that support for Symfony 1.2 is supposed to end in > November with the release of Symfony 1.3. > > What practices, if any, in Symfony 1.2 code are expected to be > incompatible with Symfony 1.3?
All the information about migrating symfony 1.2 to symfony 1.3 projects are available on the website in the Upgrade tutorial (http://www.symfony-project.org/tutorial/1_3/en/upgrade). You can also read what is deprecated (but still works) in symfony 1.3 (http://www.symfony-project.org/tutorial/1_3/en/deprecated). > > I know Symfony 1.3 won't be the huge change that Symfony 1.1/1.2 were. > But I still don't think it's wise to drop support for practices > considered valid in 1.2 the moment 1.3 appears. We don't drop working practices, symfony 1.3 is mainly about adding some polish to the whole framework, and needed features like email support. And projects running with symfony 1.2 are really easy to upgrade to symfony 1.3, thanks to the project:upgrade task. I have already upgraded several projects without a single problem. Of course, your mileage might vary, but I quite confident that it won't be a huge problem. > > Other long-established open source projects do not do this on such a > scale. Valid PHP 5.0.x code runs on PHP 5.3.x, with deprecation > warnings sometimes, but it runs. And 5.2.x is definitely still being > actively supported after the release of 5.3.x. PHP is probably the worst piece of software in this regard. Backward compatibility can be broken at any time, in any minor version. And as a matter of fact, each release of PHP (even minor ones) actually introduces regressions, or backward incompatibilities which needs to be taken care of in symfony. And sometimes, the changes are radical. I'm not trying to justify the changes we make in symfony, but frankly, the symfony 1.3 version is really about cosmetic changes. > > It is very difficult to make responsible proposals to clients without > ongoing support for at least the previous minor version series for > Symfony. But what keeps you from using symfony 1.2 even after November 2009? If your projects work, there is no need to upgrade. Can you tell me what kind of support you have on other big frameworks? I think symfony is probably one the few to have such a clear policy regarding support. And as far as I know, even PHP doesn't have such a clear support policy. Keep in mind that symfony is an Open-Source project, so everybody can contribute and scratch its itch. The core developers and all plugin developers are all working for free. Of course, Sensio sponsors the framework, of course it dedicates a lot of time and money to it, and of it can even provide extended support for all versions for companies willing to pay. And do you know how many companies, except Sensio customers, signed up for extended support in the last 2 years? None! Yep, that's right, not a single one. > > I know Symfony 1.2 wasn't supposed to be an LTS release but the > reality is that it was the first stable-enough-to-use release of > Symfony since the end of the 1.0.x series, and people have migrated > long term projects to it out of necessity. I strongly feel it should > be supported for at least a year after the release of 1.3. The fact that symfony 1.2 would have a year of support has been public since long before it was released. So people made their decisions consciously. And again, symfony 1.3 is not that difficult to upgrade to. > > I also think it is appropriate to fix serious bugs like > http://trac.symfony-project.org/ticket/6937 in the 1.2 series, making > features work substantially as advertised unless the only possible fix > is a backwards incompatible change. But I can live without embedded > M2M relation forms ever working in 1.2. What I find difficult to live > without is enough stability that the Symfony releases page doesn't > frighten clients off. > > BC breaks in a mature system should be a major-version thing (2.0, not > 1.0), and there should be ongoing support of the previous major > version for quite a while when they happen. We have always tried to find a good balance between moving the project forward (like adding new features) and keeping backward compatibility. With symfony, we try to document every single change we make and for most of the changes, and the project:upgrade task mostly does all the upgrading work for you. > > I love this framework - please help me sell it to my clients as > something that will continue to work for at least a year. (: > There were a talk before on an extended community support until June 2010. Apparently it went nowhere as I have not heard about that since a long time. I have no problem supporting symfony 1.2 longer, but people who want this extended support should also probably be able to help us. Fabien --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "symfony developers" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/symfony-devs?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
