Khepri?what?s next?

Written by willebil

Wednesday, 30 January 2008

I have seen several questions about the release-name of Joomla! 1.5 stable. In Egyptian mythology, Khepri is associated with the dung beetle (kheper), but also was associated with rebirth, renewal, and resurrection (see also the Khepri entry on wikipedia).

Because Joomla! 1.5 is a major re-write we have chosen this name because it perfectly reflects what we have done with Joomla! 1.5.

After the release I said to myself “we have released 1.5, what is next?”, and I am probably not the only one with this question We currently have set nothing in stone, but we are pretty sure about how we want to move forward. Since the initial release of Joomla! 1.0.0 we have been working on Joomla! 1.0 and Joomla! 1.5. Basically we worked on two branches, but our main focus on terms of maintaining stability was Joomla! 1.0. When we moved on to Beta and RC status, we saw a shift of focus towards Joomla! 1.5. Maybe I once write a book on what we have done to get us where we are now, but that is of later concern Now we have released Joomla! 1.5 we have two branches who are in maintenance mode, and we are about to start the process for Joomla! 1.6. A short outline on the versions just mentioned and the ideas/status:

Joomla! 1.0.x: This branch is in maintenance mode and our latest release is Joomla! 1.0.14 RC1. Currently the 1.0.x forum is checked and the tracker is updated. We know what it takes to get a stable 1.0.14 out. We try to take the same approach as with the last finalization strategy for Joomla! 1.5…we will try to fix all priority 1 and 2 artifacts. Joomla! Bug Squad (JBS) members are assembled to help out with testing and forum handling etc. After we release a stable version of Joomla! 1.0.14 we will maintain the forum and tracker, and will work on future versions if needed (meaning security issue, or when something is really broken).
Joomla! 1.5.x: We have put Joomla! 1.5 into maintenance mode, that means the Joomla! Bug Squad (JBS) is working on Joomla! 1.5.1. Not everyone may have noticed a change in approach but we really try to put a process in place where we possibly fix issues slower, but the quality will improve dramatically. The biggest change in our approach is that we only commit solutions after we have tested the patch. The JBS is now 3-4 weeks old and we are now working with this process in place. Not every detail of the new process is in place, and we talk on improving steps within the process. Something that we consider to do is also re-factor parts of the back-end components to MVC, step by step within every maintenance release. We have not yet decided which ones we will re-factor, and how we are going to implement these (possible) changes into the code base. As always we have not set a date for Joomla! 1.5.1 but we expect to be able to release it within 2-4 weeks from now.
Joomla! 1.6: In earlier discussion we agreed to start with the white paper approach. We are considering to make this method to be open not only for development work-group members, but would like to offer the community the possibility to also send in white papers. The reason we do this is pretty simple. We want to study and rank the proposals, decide which features we are going to include and with that we have a proper design upfront. And we would like to see this to be as much as possible community driven. This gives us the advantage to know what we are going to develop, and most important how we are going to do that. Details on how we are going to organize this will be shared soon.

We soon have 3 branches to maintain, and that is something we never have done before. To make this work we need our community to help out…that’s you! Past weeks we already have seen great community efforts like PBF, the documentation event, Google Highly Open Participation contest and of course the just newly created Joomla! bug Squad. The JBS is not even a month old and there are already around 25 active members. This is a mixed group of members from the development team, documentation, the former Quality & Testing, but also community members and they do an awesome job with scanning the forum/tracker, create and take delivered patches, test them etc. We will keep on investing in these teams because we need you to help out… As you might have seen, no matter what you can do, there is always something you can help with. Joomla! is a very community friendly project, so if you consider helping out, don’t hesitate you will love the experience.

Read original post at source site... http://www.joomla.org/component/option,com_jd-wp/Itemid,105/p,482/.

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