Backwards Compatibility with 1.5, 2.5 and 3.0

[alaoa]

I have been developing with Joomla since 2007 and I have seen the mass changes that need to take place in order to get a component to be backwards compatible. From what I've seen here

http://docs.joomla.org/Developing_a_Mod ... troduction

and here

http://docs.joomla.org/Potential_backwa ... tform_12.1

This is basically IMPOSSIBLE!!!

You will need to have two totally SEPARATE components. What really kills me is that they have added a JContorllerLegacy which by it's name sake mean that it will most likely go away in a future version of Joomla. I really don't want to have to manage two separate code bases if I can't find out how to write a component that can runs in 1.5, 1.6, 2.5 and 3.0 then I think I'm goign to be done developing in Joomla all together.

[evansmwendwa]

What you want to do can be considered by many a bad practice. Even in the most cross platform software there is usually different branches for each platform.

maintaining compatibility between an old software and latest versions of the same brings out many security compromises. In any case why would you want to maintain compatibility with Joomla 1.5 and 3.0 at the same time. If Joomla 1.5 is still supported I don't think that will stay for long.

My suggestion for you would be to use SVN (subversion) and have different branches of your component for each Joomla Version and you can have central code shared in the main branch.

[beau18907]

Most developers appear to be dropping support for 1.5 because it has reached its end of life in June 2012.

I will keep a version for those that need it, but I will no longer maintain it.

[alaoa]

There are a lot of websites that still running Joomla 1.5. I'm actually thinking of moving out of the Joomla Platform all together. It has gone way to many changes in the past couple of year. The amount of support (i.e my time) that I have to put to maintain a component just hasn't panned out well for me.

As far as bad practice I'm not to sure. Since I have written my post I have come up with a way to make it work nativity in all three versions but if Joomla keeps making big shifts in their API I think I will stop new development. Don't get me wrong I love the idea behind Joomla but it has a big learning curve and is still going through some growing pains. I will have to see how far it goes.

[beau18907]

Curious do you have 2 or 3 separate versions you are maintaining or have you resolved the issue to keep just one version for all??

[sovainfo]

Could you share the issues you ran into with the solution you have choosen?