Moving towards v1.8

Now that v1.7 has left the building, it could be time for a break but not here at Elgg central, instead, it is straight on with work which will eventually become v1.8 - the interface release!

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Changes to Elgg SVN and Trac

The transition from separate repositories to a single repository went well.

The core and extensions Tracs have been consolidated into a single Trac installation, now located at http://trac.elgg.org/. Previous Trac tickets for extensions have been merged in and special rewrite rules will make sure that links to the old extensions trac tickets and changesets will keep pointing to the correct places.

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Elgg 1.7 released!

I am pleased to announce Elgg 1.7 has been released--download it from the Elgg downloads page!

For 1.7, the core team focused development on improving the core API, correcting long-standing bugs, and enhancing security. During the development of 1.7, we have had an unprecedented amount of community involvement in trac. In fact, over 250 issues were resolved in trac for this release!

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New and Improved Web Services API in Elgg 1.7

Elgg 1.7 comes with an updated framework for building REST-like APIs. This was a rarely used feature in previous versions. Developers often did not know of its existence and if they did, they were frustrated by its bugs. I took on the task of making this part of Elgg usable by fixing its bugs and made some improvements along the way. Now I'd like to address the second problem which is the lack of information on what you can do with this framework.

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Code freeze for Elgg 1.7

SVN is officially in a code freeze pending the Elgg 1.7 beta release. Wow, it feels good to say that!

This means that all new functionality is finalized and only bug fixes will be made in SVN. We think all major bugs have been resolved and the core is ready to be beta tested, but want a few more days of testing before we are comfortable releasing a beta to the general public. If you have a spare minute, please grab the latest SVN and give it a try. Note that this is not yet ready to be used on a production server!

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Distributed Version Control With Git

Developers, ever use Git? Git, like Subversion, is a (distributed) version control system: a way to track changes across each of your files, forever. Just as Subversion was a leap ahead of CVS, Git surpasses Subversion, particularly in regards to branching and merging.

Subversion branching is a cumbersome process at best: "svn copy" commands are executed at some revision number, which you must keep track of for later merging. Any time you port trunk changes into your branch, you have to again carefully note from X to Y revision. Add to the mix multiple developers each with their own branches and maintenance becomes a nightmare.

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Elgg 1.7's API

One of the most exciting features of Elgg 1.7 is the reworked entity-retrieving API. The decision to use an array instead of function arguments might seem a bit strange at first, as not many PHP applications use this approach, but it should be familiar to any one who has used a language with named arguments or even JavaScript APIs like jQuery.

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v1.7 update

As many of you will know, v1.7 is the next version of Elgg due for release. A few folks have been asking for an update on a potential release date. At this time, we are unable to give an exact date for release as we want to make sure we have tackled all the items we feel are important and ensure it is has been thoroughly tested.

If you have been following the commit timeline, you will know that there has been significant development on the core. The aim is to sort out some of the annoying issues which have persisted in Elgg since v1.0 and to introduce better coding standards. We feel that it is worth taking the time to make sure v1.7 is the most stable version of Elgg so far and a solid platform for you to build upon.

We are currently working with developers in the community to test, debug and patch any remaining or unexpected issues that arise during testing. If you would like to help out, please feel free to grab the nightly build or latest from SVN and report back any issues you find. Patches are also welcome and can be uploaded to Elgg's trac. I need to stress - DO NOT USE THE NIGHTLY BUILD OR LATEST SVN ON A PRODUCTION SERVICE.

We would like to thank everyone for their patience.

A call to developers, Collaboration, and ElggCamp BA

Elgg 1.7 is getting close. A few of the final pieces are coming into place and I'd like to ask developers to grab the latest SVN to help us test. Please point your SVN client to http://code.elgg.org/elgg/trunk/ and give it a go!

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Elgg 1.7 development, Elgg Users Google Group, and ElggCamp BA

Greetings all!

Sorry for the delay in posting--I've been busy in both my developer and personal life and haven't had a chance to sit down over the weekend to write a wrap-up. I've received quite a few emails from people asking after 1.7. No need to worry: development of 1.7 is going well and I'm hopeful to have a developer's preview release out the door by the end of this week, with 1.7 final out sometime in December.

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