Development on the next OpenCms version has started

May 7, 2003

After the successful release of OpenCms 5.0 (which was downloaded over 1000 times within 48 hours after the release) Alkacon Software has started development on the next version of OpenCms.

The next version of OpenCms will feature substantial changes to the database model. Please see below for more details about the changes. Developers using the OpenCms source code from the CVS repository should be aware that this means the HEAD (i.e. default) CVS branch will be heavily modified within the following weeks, and will most certainly not be usable in production environments.

Bug fixed and smaller enhancements for the 5.0 version of OpenCms will of course still be developed and released in the "branch_5_0_x" branch of the CVS. The version numbers for these updates will be 5.0.1, 5.0.2 etc. Developers that run OpenCms in production and are looking for updates or improvements to OpenCms 5.0 should use the "branch_5_0_x" CVS branch until further notice.

The current development version of OpenCms is 5.1.0. Subsequent development releases will be 5.1.1, 5.1.2 etc. When development on the 5.1.x version is finished, the next OpenCms stable version will be released with the 5.2.0 number.

Here's what Alkacon Software will be working on in the next couple of months: 

• The OpenCms VFS will be made more scalable, so that OpenCms can be used better for document management
• The user OpenCms user management will be made independent from the OpenCms VFS, so that other user directories (e.g. LDAP) can be "plugged" into the system as a separate module
• In this process, we will probably re-write part or all of the OpenCms publishing, link-management and export code
• Proprietary solutions (e.g. for database pooling) are going to be replaced with Java 1.4 / J2EE standard solutions or well known packages from other open source projects
• We will provide all resources in the OpenCms VFS with a UUID
• We will add interfaces to the OpenCms core that allow the addition of a module-based OpenCms database replication mechanism
• We will provide a mechanism to update content from a 5.0.x version to the upcoming 5.2 version before this is released

Please keep in mind that contributions to the OpenCms development are most welcome. I expect that the 5.2 release will feature improvements in the OpenCms workplace and probably in the WYSIWYG editors, hopefully with a Mozilla 1.3 compatible editor. The Alkacon team will support the development of these (or other) additions as much as possible.

At this point, we can not give any release date or even a timeframe for the 5.2 release.

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