OpenPSA

It's that time again.. The next release of OpenPSA and the underlying MidCOM framework has arrived. The big news this time around is that we have switched over to the new, Symfony Forms-based datamanager. The immediate benefits are more, and more ... [More] complete, localizations, HTML5 support, and a lot greater flexibility when rendering forms. And of course, this opens the door for many new exciting applications (not to mention that it gets rid of our last PHP4-era dependency..). Aside from that, here's a few other highlights:   update bundled JS dependencies (elFinder, CodeMirror) implement support for subtasks in project management & sales/invoicing basic iCal create & edit support more testcases and improved coverage unbundling of optional components (DM2, tmp service, positioning) Converted content cache & attachment serving to Symfony HTTP Foundation many cleanups, API streamlining, small fixes and simplifications As usual, you can get the release via Packagist/Composer, or directly from github.   Enjoy!   [Less]

It's that time again.. The next release of OpenPSA and the underlying MidCOM framework has arrived. The big news this time around is that we have switched over to the new, Symfony Forms-based datamanager. The immediate benefits are more, and more ... [More] complete, localizations, HTML5 support, and a lot greater flexibility when rendering forms. And of course, this opens the door for many new exciting applications (not to mention that it gets rid of our last PHP4-era dependency..). Aside from that, here's a few other highlights:   update bundled JS dependencies (elFinder, CodeMirror) implement support for subtasks in project management & sales/invoicing basic iCal create & edit support more testcases and improved coverage unbundling of optional components (DM2, tmp service, positioning) Converted content cache & attachment serving to Symfony HTTP Foundation many cleanups, API streamlining, small fixes and simplifications As usual, you can get the release via Packagist/Composer, or directly from github.   Enjoy!   [Less]

Get it while it's hot! As announced in the last release, OpenPSA 9.2.0 is the first version which drops support for the legacy Midgard PHP extensions. This allowed us not only to remove a lot of old code, but also means we can begin taking advantage ... [More] of the greatly expanded functionality our Doctrine backend offers. This already lead to improvements in performance-critical functions, but more goodness is sure to follow.   Dropping Midgard support also allowed us to begin taking advantage of newer PHP functionality (although the minimum required version is still a very modest PHP 5.4), which helps especially in security-related areas, and also paves the way for the new (Symfony Form-based) Datamanager to be rolled out all over the tree. This will be the major focus of the next release, in 9.2.0, you will find among others the following changes: updated bundled JS libraries (elFinder, tinyMCE, jqueryUI, fullCalendar, fancytree, jqGrid) begin rolling out Doctrine-based performance improvements PDF generation for offers improved RCS UI & consistency in associated serializers groundwork for resource support in o.o.calendar many, many cleanups, streamlining, fixes & usability improvements As usual, OpenPSA can be downloaded from Github or installed via Composer. If you encounter any issues or have questions, just let us know!   Enjoy! [Less]

Get it while it's hot! As announced in the last release, OpenPSA 9.2.0 is the first version which drops support for the legacy Midgard PHP extensions. This allowed us not only to remove a lot of old code, but also means we can begin taking advantage ... [More] of the greatly expanded functionality our Doctrine backend offers. This already lead to improvements in performance-critical functions, but more goodness is sure to follow.   Dropping Midgard support also allowed us to begin taking advantage of newer PHP functionality (although the minimum required version is still a very modest PHP 5.4), which helps especially in security-related areas, and also paves the way for the new (Symfony Form-based) Datamanager to be rolled out all over the tree. This will be the major focus of the next release, in 9.2.0, you will find among others the following changes: updated bundled JS libraries (elFinder, tinyMCE, jqueryUI, fullCalendar, fancytree, jqGrid) begin rolling out Doctrine-based performance improvements PDF generation for offers improved RCS UI & consistency in associated serializers groundwork for resource support in o.o.calendar many, many cleanups, streamlining, fixes & usability improvements As usual, OpenPSA can be downloaded from Github or installed via Composer. If you encounter any issues or have questions, just let us know!   Enjoy! [Less]

All good things must come to an end. Especially if these things are software Midgard has been a constant presence in OpenPSA ever since the days when Netscape ruled surpreme. In fact, it has been the foundation on which MidCOM was developed ... [More] , providing a stable environment in a time when there were few native PHP frameworks that could have offered the same.   Unfortunately, the Midgard community‘s momentum never recovered from the introduction of Midgard 2. Similar to the KDE 3 to 4 migration of the same era, you had all the feature-complete and deployed code running on a framework in maintenance-only mode, while the newer, developing version was sufficiently different and untested that making the business case for a migration project proved to be very difficult. So Midgard 1 instances continued running on a stagnant platform with a builtin expiration date (due to the maximum supported PHP version being 5.3), while Midgard 2 never really took of, since there was very little code that could be made to run on it with reasonable effort.   At the same time, native PHP solutions for what Midgard provided became more and more competent, which only made the disadvantages of Midgard (limited hosting options due to the need to install custom libraries & a PHP extension, segmentation faults, more difficult debugging, little IDE support) all the more apparent, especially since it could never play out it cross-language strengths due to lack of adoption.   So the writing was on the wall (and in this blog) for a while now, and today, it has finally happened: Support for running OpenPSA on the Midgard extensions has been removed. It has been a good ride, but now it‘s time to say goodbye and send our old Viking friend on his final journey.   Right now, the removal of extension support brings us some welcome reductions in complexity and mostly unused code. Going forward, it will allow us to streamline our dependencies, the installation/setup experience and of course pave the way for many performance improvements by more fully utilizing the newly-available of Doctrine functionality. If you still have old sites you want to port to OpenPSA while continuing to use Midgard, you can use the recent 9.1.0 release, for new sites, enjoy the benefits of midgard-portable! [Less]

All good things must come to an end. Especially if these things are software Midgard has been a constant presence in OpenPSA ever since the days when Netscape ruled surpreme. In fact, it has been the foundation on which MidCOM was developed ... [More] , providing a stable environment in a time when there were few native PHP frameworks that could have offered the same.   Unfortunately, the Midgard community‘s momentum never recovered from the introduction of Midgard 2. Similar to the KDE 3 to 4 migration of the same era, you had all the feature-complete and deployed code running on a framework in maintenance-only mode, while the newer, developing version was sufficiently different and untested that making the business case for a migration project proved to be very difficult. So Midgard 1 instances continued running on a stagnant platform with a builtin expiration date (due to the maximum supported PHP version being 5.3), while Midgard 2 never really took of, since there was very little code that could be made to run on it with reasonable effort.   At the same time, native PHP solutions for what Midgard provided became more and more competent, which only made the disadvantages of Midgard (limited hosting options due to the need to install custom libraries & a PHP extension, segmentation faults, more difficult debugging, little IDE support) all the more apparent, especially since it could never play out it cross-language strengths due to lack of adoption.   So the writing was on the wall (and in this blog) for a while now, and today, it has finally happened: Support for running OpenPSA on the Midgard extensions has been removed. It has been a good ride, but now it‘s time to say goodbye and send our old Viking friend on his final journey.   Right now, the removal of extension support brings us some welcome reductions in complexity and mostly unused code. Going forward, it will allow us to streamline our dependencies, the installation/setup experience and of course pave the way for many performance improvements by more fully utilizing the newly-available of Doctrine functionality. If you still have old sites you want to port to OpenPSA while continuing to use Midgard, you can use the recent 9.1.0 release, for new sites, enjoy the benefits of midgard-portable! [Less]

Our second stable release has arrived As announced during the last release, in this cycle, a lot of work went into removing unused and deprecated functionality, and bringing the code closer in line with modern standards. That is not to say that all ... [More] changes were under the hood, there's a nice list of user-visible improvements, too, for example: org.openpsa.notifier can now be extended with custom backends (like Slack/HipChat integration for example) a new & improved Markdown editor replacing the unmaintained markitup! editor UI streamlining & usability improvements all over the place, most prominently in the product database Improvements in security-related areas like random string generation and login session handling a new caching backend based on Doctrine Cache new hcard parser (mf2) Support for TinyMCE image editor, i.e. you can now edit images onsite This is also the very last release that will still run on the Midgard PHP extensions. The test harness for these extensions has already been disabled, but the support code is still in place. That means you can still run openpsa-based sites on the extension. midgard-portable is now installed by default and will be the ORM of choice going forward. But more on that in another post.   Enjoy! [Less]

Our second stable release has arrived As announced during the last release, in this cycle, a lot of work went into removing unused and deprecated functionality, and bringing the code closer in line with modern standards. That is not to say that all ... [More] changes were under the hood, there's a nice list of user-visible improvements, too, for example: org.oopenpsa.notifier can now be extended with custom backends (like Slack/HipChat integration for example) a new & improved Markdown editor replacing the unmaintained markitup! editor UI streamlining & usability improvements all over the place, most prominently in the product database Improvements in security-related areas like random string generation and login session handling a new caching backend based on Doctrine Cache new hcard parser (mf2) Support for TinyMCE image editor, i.e. you can now edit images onsite This is also the very last release that will still run on the Midgard PHP extensions. The test harness for these extensions has already been disabled, but the support code is still in place. That means you can still run openpsa-based sites on the extension. midgard-portable is now installed by default and will be the ORM of choice going forward. But more on that in another post.   Enjoy! [Less]

Our second stable release has arrived As announced during the last release, in this cycle, a lot of work went into removing unused and deprecated functionality, and bringing the code closer in line with modern standards. That is not to say that all ... [More] changes were under the hood, there's a nice list of user-visible improvements, too, for example: org.openpsa.notifier can now be extended with custom backends (like Slack/HipChat integration for example) a new & improved Markdown editor replacing the unmaintained markitup! editor UI streamlining & usability improvements all over the place, most prominently in the product database Improvements in security-related areas like random string generation and login session handling a new caching backend based on Doctrine Cache new hcard parser (mf2) Support for TinyMCE image editor, i.e. you can now edit images onsite This is also the very last release that will still run on the Midgard PHP extensions. The test harness for these extensions has already been disabled, but the support code is still in place. That means you can still run openpsa-based sites on the extension. midgard-portable is now installed by default and will be the ORM of choice going forward. But more on that in another post.   Enjoy! [Less]

Today, the 9.0 line was branched from master, and the first stable release, OpenPSA 9.0.0 was tagged, concluding a development cycle that started almost six years ago. In over 5000 commits, the entire codebase was thoroughly debugged, refactored ... [More] , streamlined, and modernized to work better in a larger number of environments: 9.0 can run on Midgard 1 (8.09.9), Midgard2, and Doctrine (via midgard-portable) and all PHP versions from 5.3 to 7.0 on Linux and macOS, giving you a wide range of development and deployment options.   You can read more about the details of the development progress in the preceding posts on this page. For now, suffice it to say that practically the entire frontend, all external dependencies and large parts of the business logic have been overhauled and improved, while retaining the maximum backward compatibility possible, in order to facilitate porting of existing sites and applications. If you have been following OpenPSA‘s development, you may have noticed that we were production-ready and on a rolling release cycle of sorts already two years ago, so in terms of real-world impact, the big 9.0 won‘t be such a big deal. Still, it‘s always good to have something marked as stable, if only to better work with package management systems.   Going forward, the bigger deal with this release is that now that 9.0 is separated from master, we can start on the next rounds of improvements while still providing a stable dependency for existing deployments. Among other things, a new datamanager library (based on Symfony Forms) is incoming, as well as many performance improvements, once we switch to Doctrine exclusively. But more on that later.   For now, enjoy OpenPSA 9.0! [Less]