CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Current specs for CiviCRM 2.0 state that it will ONLY be compatible with Joomla 1.0.13 (the current stable release). This is a change from previous editions of the wiki spec, which had originally stated it would ONLY be compatible with Joomla 1.5. This shift by the core team is due to the delays in a stable release of 1.5.

I expressed my concern with this change on the wiki page, but Lobo suggested creating a discussion on the forums. Here's the wiki page:
http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRM/CiviCRM+v2.0 (see the comments at the end of the article).

From my perspective, the challenge I face is that I've recently built a few sites in 1.5RC3 + CiviCRM specifically because the originally wiki article expected the next release to only be 1.5 compatible. I have personally found 1.5RC3, especially recent nightly builds, to be stable enough to justify developing on. I realize that may have been a risky decision, but I felt it would be in the best interest of the groups I work with to not have to upgrade from 1.0 to 1.5 just a few months after their initial site development.

So anyway, I want to make a pitch for CiviCRM 2.0 to be compatible with both 1.0.13 and 1.5 in legacy mode (not native mode, which would potentially require significant code changes). Here's my argument:

• First, I think that 1.5 is pretty close to stable release. Based on this recent developer blog article (http://www.joomla.org/component/option,com_jd-wp/Itemid,105/p,450/), I suspect the last few critical bugs will be squashed in the upcoming event this weekend. At the very least, I expect an RC4 that is very close to stable, released before year end.
• While it's certainly not a desirable place to be, the reality is that we in the Joomla world are firmly entrenched in the "land between releases." And the differences between 1.0.13 and 1.5 are significant enough, that it's not simply a matter of running an update script to upgrade once 1.5 goes stable. There are more and more users willing to go with 1.5 for production sites, and probably a lot of people who are planning to upgrade once 1.5 goes stable. My concern is that if CiviCRM is NOT compatible with both versions, it will potentially isolate some of the potential market.

For the record, I do have CiviCRM running on several 1.5 production sites, and apart from a few minor hacks and tweaks here and there, really have not had any significant problems.

So my plea is for the core team to make every effort possible to make 2.0 compatible with both 1.0.13 and 1.5. My hope is that the 1.5 legacy mode is such that it requires minimal additional work to extend compatibility to 1.5.

From the Joomla+CiviCRM community, can you comment on this forum topic and express whether this issue resonates with you, and whether you share the concerns and needs outlined. Obviously if I'm the only one facing this issue, I don't expect the core team to develop just for my needs (unless of course they wanted to!).

I also will commit to being an aggressive Alpha/Beta tester for 2.0 on 1.5. So if anyone else is willing to make that commitment, maybe you can express that here, so the core team knows the Joomla community will help support this effort through testing.

Thanks!
Brian

My company is in a similar position with Joomla 1.5RC3 and have one current site running with Civcrm 1.9. It certainly had some problems but we managed to get around some and others were fixed with a newer release.

Significant and early future upgrades in web software is a hard one to justify for those who hold the purse strings of not-for-profit organisations so we are just about to embark on another 3 - 4 month dev cycle for a new client where we hope to use Joomla 1.5 RC4 during dev with an expected upgrade to a production stable version by launch, hopefully with Civicrm 2.0 coming in mid project. This is our preferred combination for all CMS/CRM implementations.

We too are surprised by the change in plans for compatibility only with Joomla 1.0.13, as we expect many developers to start using Joomla 1.5 ASAP, as we certainly intend to.

Lobo I understand the difficulties in developing on shifting sand but as this has been slated as the final Joomla RC version, that sand does appear more stable now with predictions of relatively few changes before the stable release.

We would also be willing to do some beta testing on the Joomla 1.5 civicrm 2.0 mix.

Cheers
Kim

v2 hit alpha at approx the same time that joomla released 1.5. v2 will not officially support Joomla 1.5. However, a few folks from the community have tested parts of civicrm on v2 successfully. If the joomla community wants civicrm v2 to work on joomla 1.5, please feel free to investigate issues and submit patches. We'll definitely consider rolling them into v2 releases

I suspect CiviCRM v2.1 will support Joomla 1.5 and Drupal 6. Backward compatibility with older versions will depend on the amount of changes in the respective CMS'es and how much additional work is involved

lobo

We'll start planning 2.1 AFTER 2.0 reaches beta. No, the work has not already begun

lobo