[Mapbender-users] Mapbender3 Version 3.0.6.0 announcement and next steps

[Axel Schaefer]

Dear Mapbender-Users and Mapbender-developers.

tl;dr: new version coming, PHP 5.5.x, great stuff, new things, more Github.

We are working on the next mapbender-release and plan to finish it this
or next week. It will be a 3.0.6.0 release and besides a ton of bugfixes
and additional features it includes to new structures on the
architecture:

One awaited change is that we put out the submodules like mapbender, fom
and owsproxy and put them into composer to update them as modules with a
version in a specific minor branch (e.g. 3.0.6.x). This cleans the
structure and gives better opportunities to update.

Another change is the update to Symfony 2.8. This led to changes in
Mapbender3 and to some considerations regarding the compatibility of
running installations, so we marked some changes as deprecated. The
forthcoming 3.1 version of MB3 will be based on the next LTS release of
Symfony (which will be a version 3) and all the deprecated code needs to
be updated then. This 2.8 step is a nice and needed step to prepare for
Symfony 3.

This leads to a new system-requirement with PHP versions. We already had
the discussion here in the mailing-list and we leaved the 3.0.5 version
compatible to PHP 5.3 but we finally cannot support that anymore.

With Mapbender 3.0.6 the PHP compatibility is now PHP 5.5.4. But the
newer the better. Even Version 5.5 is marked as end-of-life and 5.6 is
provided with security fixes only [1]. Mapbender 3.0.6 provides a
compatibility to PHP 7.0.

Most changes to bugfixes and features are already desribed in the
current version-history [2].

We are currently adjusting the documentation, to make some chapters
clearer and will move the developer-parts into the Contibuting guide
directly in the Github-repository. [3] This guide is directly for the
developers who checked out the source-code of MB3 and want to create a
package for themselves. As you can see the installation from Git is made
easier and a lot of the TODOs is placed into the bootstrap-script and
the Composer. After that you'll get a fresh instance of MB3 on a local
SQLite database.

As you also might have noticed, we've created a Docker repository for
building and running MB3. The build-repository is for creating archives
of Mapbender3 and will be part of the CI process. [4] The running MB3
docker is for running MB3 and is yet for testing purposes [5]. We will
further work on that repositories to integrate them into our CI-systems.

Next steps:

To keep you informed what will happen next, here is a list of the
ongoing features and big topics we are going to do in Mapbender3. These
are right now in the concept-phase (working on technical concept based
on requirements) or in development-phase (implementing based on
technical concept).

- Further working on the 3.1 architecture with modules, documentation on
  implementing modules and implementing modules themselves.

- Working on the exchange of the Map-API: Change from OL2 to OL4. This
  is a big change with a lot of cross references. But we are doing it.

- Working on a new mobile template: This is at some point related to the
  Map-API topic.

- Working on re-usable layerset-instances: to keep clicking-time low.

- Working on a core routing-interface that can dock on different
  routing-engines.

- Integrating the LDAP Bundle into MB3 (see
  https://github.com/mapbender/mapbender/issues/494 for some details).

Further on, we will use Github more than we did for the 3.0.5
release. We use an internal ticket system, like most of you do and a lot
of tickets regarding restructuring and refactoring were placed here.

For 3.0.6 we will place bugs and features in the issue list of the
Mapbender module (not the mapbender-starter due to historical
reasons). [6] So feel free to place issues there, comment, discuss, or
finally solve the issues.

All of the steps (modules, contributing, ...) are to involve developers
and users better into the structure of Mapbender3, to make development
easier and straighter and to get to the big features with a good
architecture and long-term usage.

Best regards
Axel Schaefer

[1] http://php.net/supported-versions.php
[2] http://doc.mapbender3.org/de/book/versions.html
[3] https://github.com/mapbender/mapbender-starter/blob/release/3.0.6/CONTRIBUTING.md
[4] https://github.com/mapbender/docker-build
[5] https://github.com/mapbender/docker
[6] https://github.com/mapbender/mapbender

-- 
Axel Schaefer
WhereGroup GmbH & Co. KG
Eifelstraße 7
53119 Bonn
Germany

Fon: +49 (0)228 / 90 90 38 - 23 (neue Durchwahl!)
Fax: +49 (0)228 / 90 90 38 - 11

axel.schaefer at wheregroup.com
www.meldemax.com
www.wheregroup.com
Amtsgericht Bonn, HRA 6788
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