Hello everyone, it's my first time here so thank you all for having me :)
I've read a lot about FuelPHP and have decided to use it in a project I'm doing. It seems to suit my needs and the needs of the project, and doesn't seem to difficult to get to grips with (which is always a bonus!).
However something on the homepage caught my eye, and its something that affects my project later on. It makes a reference to FuelPHP 2.x being released and a new LTS version of FuelPHP 1.x is to be released. Will it be possible for users of FuelPHP 1.x to upgrade to FuelPHP 2.x?
If it's not possible, would it be adviseable to develop applications now using the beta of FuelPHP 2.x and then upgrade to subsequent versions? Or, should I just stick with v1.x and it's LTS and redevelop the application in a year or two's time?
Michael, I'm no core developer but an enthusiastic developer for and with Fuel so I now bits and bytes about it.
Guessing from what I read about Fuel v2 on the forums, fuelphp.com and the IRC channel, Fuel v2 isn't close to being released in a beta version - at least not until some time this summer, if I recall correctly - there are still a bunch of things missing (like the awesome ORM - correct me if I'm wrong @Harro Verton) though the basic stuff (like controller, requests, responses) seems to implemented and running stable.
So I personally recommend using Fuel v1 for your project and then keep it stable and secure with the LTS while you're porting it to v2.
And it will be possible to upgrade, although it depends on our code whether or not that will be complex. If for example you did a lot of core extensions where you replaced existing methods, you might be better off with the LTS version, and the internals of Fuel v2 are 100% different.
Having said that, for the developer we aim for API compatibility. If that is not possible, we will try to achieve that through a compatibility package. If that is not possible either, we will provide clear migration instructions.
Some bits, like the current ORM, will probably be ported into the compatibilty package, since the new one will be completely different.
It is to early to tell what the migration effort will be, Fuel v2 is not complete enough. But once it is, we'll start converting all our internal applications, a process we will use to detect what is missing and to write migration documentation.
Thank you both, you've both been very helpful answering my question(s)!
I doubt I'd be doing anything like replacing existing methods in the core, so I might be alright. But to be fair if there is an LTS version of FuelPHP it would give me time to port it over to v2 eventually.
We (our company) mainly develops business software for intranet use (i.e. webbased applications, not "websites"), applications that have 5 year (or sometimes more) maintenance cycles.
In that period there is no real need for "the latest and greatest" (so upgrading to a new major release of the framework is hardly ever done), but there is a need to have the application run on a supported framework, so bugs and security issues will be adressed during the life cycle of the application, and we can guarantee our clients the application will work for it's projected lifetime.
Which is why we find an LTS version very important. FuelPHP is one of the few PHP frameworks that recognizes this.
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