What holding back the release of Joomla 4 b1 now? Topic is solved

[darb]

Hi Joomlers!

I wonder whats holding back Joomla 4 beta 1 and if there is bcs of adding more features why not add that to J 4.1, J 4.2 etc and get Joomla 4 b1 out now so Joomlas 3pds can seriously test and be ready for Joomla 4.

And the rest of us

Looking forward for some update # George ( latest was 17 octobere https://developer.joomla.org/news/793-j ... ha-12.html )

I think that will bring a lot more activity and attention from more people and drive development of Joomla 4 faster forward.

[brian]

If people dont test things now it will never get to beta

[darb]

If people dont test things now it will never get to beta

The question is what I mean when you decide that the development phase goes strategically from alpha nn release to beta 1 release. Time is money and it’s important to keep momentum and excitement to get/keep Joomla community people/users on board.

In what condition is a beta ( alpha, rc,..) when, why you release it and how you measure that?
I know many extensions developers that have a more complex extension that wait for the beta to be released to start testing their extensions with Joomla 4 and that’s what’s holding them back to testing and contributing too Joomla 4 actively.

Many just put a J 4 label on JED and I guess it’s almost nobody there that care about being compliant until the beta is released and then start working with that bcs of customers/users start testing and asking about it.

Also If a beta is holding a Joomla 4 beta back bcs of you can’t add no more functions after that period/or test it completely why don’t exclude those for an coming updating Joomla version like Joomla 4.1 or Joomla 4.2 instead (decision release lead) and schedule/focus certain no 1 priority dev function one at a time/versions later. And at the same time fix bugs ie Joomla 4.0.x meanwhile.

So you have one ongoing version that will be released working as is now for bug fixing security etc and a coming version that is a new function version ie Joomla 4.1, 4.2 etc that also could be match/target with Google Summer projects.

I think this would lead to more testers too...

[brian]

yes time is money
therefore testing is an investment

[deleted user]

So you have one ongoing version that will be released working as is now for bug fixing security etc and a coming version that is a new function version ie Joomla 4.1, 4.2 etc that also could be match/target with Google Summer projects.

I think this would lead to more testers too...

HA! HAHAHA! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA *chokes from laughing so hard*

The only reason I stepped up to lead a heavy feature release on a very short turnaround is because of the promise of support from a vast number of people. I think 5 showed up. None of those included the decision makers in the project until I threatened to pull the release for lack of support.

It's only within the ivory tower of Joomla that people still think that people will magically show up at the door to do what is the equivalent to a development team's full time job based purely on altruistic tendencies (AKA volunteerism). You ever stop to think that maybe the reason J4 has taken so long is because it relies 100% on volunteer time and people are wisely deciding to spend less of their free time basically duplicating what they do for their paid work, for free (I know that's part of the reason I cut back, it was pretty insane trying to pull 85-90 hour weeks at a minimum between a paid job and Joomla on the pay of a 40 hour week for as long as I did it)?

You want J4 to come sooner? Help out and stop asking loaded questions of people while expecting everyone else to do the hard work.

[sozzled]

I agree with the observations and comments made by @mbabker and @brian. I also agree with the implications made in the question asked by the OP. The question is, indeed, "loaded" in a way that implies that the responsibility for delivering J! 4 [beta] is all about the development team, somehow, and has nothing to do with the community's involvement in testing things.

Let me also state for the record that I am not well equipped to involve myself in testing alpha versions of anything (esp. if the testing activities involve anything more than download an installation package of something and run it like any "ordinary" person would do). Furthermore, alpha versions are not locked down, in the sense that features are constantly being added, expanded or contracted. The situation is too fluid for me to say that "yeah, it works" only to discover that a few days later, a feature I tested was removed or that a new feature was added. So, for those reasons, I stay clear of testing until the feature set has been locked and we can move into beta testing.

The most important feature that's need, in my opinion, is the ability to seamlessly update from one version of J! to another. This isn't just the case for going from one version of J! 4 to another; it's also important to establish that people will be able to upgrade from J! 3 to J! 4 and I haven't seen any sign of that happening while there's all this arm-wrestling over what should, or should not be, in scope for J! 4.

Also, the nonsense discussion about all the things that people seem to dislike about the backend design of J! 4—that has mysteriously been marked as "resolved" and yet it continues to go on and on (?)—has been a total turn-off for me. I'm so unimpressed with that discussion that I don't know if I even want J! 4.

Three years ago, someone asked me at a local JUG meeting, "When do you think J! 4 will be released?" I replied, somewhat off-the-cuff "It won't be this year, mate." About a year ago, someone else (who is a long-term member of this forum community) suggested that I might like to involve myself in testing J! 4. I answered him in the terms I outlined in the second para. above. Things are just too fluid, too changeable.

If one wanted to bet on the delivery of J! 4 (beta, RC or stable) then I believe the odds would be long. 100-1 for J! 4 [stable] this month (for starters); 5-1 for J! 4 this year. I wouldn't even know when "even money" would be a bookmaker's odds given the running commentary from the punters (incl., perhaps, punters like me).

Your guess is as good as mind but here's what I feel might offer some certainty. Once the J! 4 feature set is locked down and we're not continually dealing with scope creep, J! 3.10 needs to be brought out alongside J! 4 beta.

[darb]

You want J4 to come sooner? Help out and stop asking loaded questions of people while expecting everyone else to do the hard work.

Michael, I do admirer you and the work you have done for Joomla. You are one of Joomla heroes and you should be proud of that.

I don’t agree this is "loaded questions", it’s just observations and my own Joomla experience since joining 2005 and doing web development since 1995. I am not a deep knowledge programmer though and I will not become one.

But I am a real open source heart supporter doing my first challenging project with the very first released version of Linux Red Hat, PERL 5/CGI & JAVA already beginning of 1995, setting up a webhosting too. So I have some years of experience understanding of this industry and programming projects.

I try to ask intelligent questions to help Joomla forward and to understand what’s going on in the Joomla community to make it better bcs it is not "all" about the code work. Without directions and guiding, Joomla is like Titanic - doesn’t know where to go and why.

If Joomla should survive without being an small dying internal club for its own mutual admiration we need to be transparent and listening to people with different skillsets - not only about the final work = coding. It has no value if it’s not used and is obsolete.

That is trivial in every project that has competitors and is not just a one man hobby project.

[webdevtim]

Sozzled, I agree with mbaker here as well. We want open source and transparency, and we want community, but we have to deal with the reality that coding takes time and that means it consumes resources and means it costs money. We need to make sure that the Core Team can dedicate all of their occupational time to developing Joomla. We need discussions on how to achieve that.

I also agree that the community needs to be involved in testing, testing the Alpha releases so that we can get to the Beta releases and general release. We all need to spend a few hours a week testing the Alphas, and giving responses, me included, so that the Core Team has something more than an echo chamber to work with. Feedback is oh so important to the development process, even negative feedback, because negative feedback keeps us from making fantasy land presumptions, that sound good on paper, but don't fly in the real world.

[darb]

Thanks for various feedback of "What holding back the release of Joomla 4 b1 now?" sozzeled, mbaker, brian,webdivtim.

I also would like to feed, encourage and discuss the Joomla development process how it can continuously be improved and adapted better for Joomla as a whole bcs its not only about the code.

Negative positive feedback is also important bcs one could always learn more, improve things and understand better how other can have solutions you yourself didn't think of. And I dont mean about a precise code now but more on how the whole Joomla project moving forward to create the new fit into the future web development landscape.

I think this good initiative Forum for the Future: Re-Engage & Re-Ignite Stream Report https://volunteers.joomla.org/teams/vol ... -stream-re is a good step for bringing different people to engage.

[darb]

Yes as I can see now that there are 25 open release blockers right now https://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms/is ... Blocker%22

Perhaps would be a good idea to make a petition to power together to just focus prioritise on these right now?

[mikerotec]

Actually, somebody had prematurely released a beta 1 last week.. It came up in my alpha 12 installation as 'recommended update'. so I updated it. It proceeded to update normally with no errors, and when it was finished, the site front end looked ok. I logged in as admin and the back-end was destroyed ( totally non-functional).

Not sure what happened there, so I just nuked it

[brian]

No - no one prematurely released anything - the beta1 designation is the next release and as such the nightly builds are already tagged with that.

They shouldnt be but thats another story

In future if you get an error PLEASE PLEASE don't "nuke it" and keep quiet. PLEASE PLEASE tell us

[mcarrara]

As a prospective Joomla user what has upset me is when I go to the roadmap it has not been updated since October. I was anticipating getting Version 4 real soon (March 2020) If 4 is not coming soon, why not update the roadmap to reflect this? It is a bad first impression of Joomla.

Mark

[sozzled]

It is a bad first impression of Joomla.

I understand how you may be feeling. J! 4 has been a long time coming and this has been frustrating for a lot of people.

However ...

... perhaps the best "first impressions" that we could make are:

1) Joomla is the second most-used CMS for website construction behind WP and, if there was no future for J!, the thousands of people who use J! to build millions of websites would not continue to use J!.

2) J! 3.x has been in production use for the last seven years. Take a look at some of the statistics, for example https://developer.joomla.org/about/stats.html. Read some recent articles written by respected commentators.

3) Even though some people may have built their websites on old/outdated versions of J!, there are millions of J! websites and many of them are really well-made! The difference between one website built by one person and another website built by someone else lies on the skill of the person who builds websites. It's a mixture of art, science and experience.

4) Just because people have their own opinions on something doesn't make anyone's opinion an immutable truth. I have my opinions as everyone else has their opinions. I have enjoyed using J! for over a decade and, even though we'll have debates about "the future" I will probably continue to enjoy J! for a long time to come.

The future is unpredictable. The only certainties in life are that we will have to pay taxes and we will die.

Even though the future is uncertain, there are people who build their business on predicting the future; they are known as fortune-tellers. When it comes to making choices about what products and services you may require, if people need something in the short-term then it's probably best if people base those decisions on what is currently available today rather waiting for something that may or may not occur according to someone's predictions about the future.

In short ... relax! Set your frustrations aside for a bit. If people are not familiar with J! then try it out for themselves. If people want a really good first impression, start with J! 3.x and work your way from there.

[darb]

The last Joomla community report and communiction about whats going on with Joomla 4 is 17 October 2019 last year "Joomla 4 is on the horizon" … Alpha 12 is over 4 months ago .

https://developer.joomla.org/news/793-j ... ha-12.html

We all know its a large undertake to lead a new Joomla release and its getting more complex over the years but..Joomla community people deserve better information and communication whats going on with the progress of Joomla 4.

Who is charge for leading the important new Joomla 4 release? still Wilson George or have that changed or ?

[darb]

Yes as I can see now that there are 25 open release blockers right now https://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms/is ... Blocker%22

Perhaps would be a good idea to make a petition to power together to just focus prioritise on these right now?

its now also "beta blockers" and I think thats a good step forward to focus on these to get the first beta out asap and get more people testing and involved in the Joomla testing/coding..as I said I know many 3pds that waiting for the beta to be released until they do anything to contribute and testing for Joomla.

As now there is still 7 beta blockers to get rid of

https://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms/la ... ta-blocker

[brian]

> as I said I know many 3pds that waiting for the beta to be released until they do anything to contribute and testing for Joomla.

And that's why you have to wait

[darb]

Yeah hope it will be able to coordinate with the release of new magazine https://volunteers.joomla.org/teams/joo ... ne-updates

And also all worldwide resources Joomlers that could have contributed to a mass effort to tell the world about the new Joomla 4 i f the Joomla marketing department also share/coordinate that with all of us how to help marketing Joomla 4b release and with ref to new Joomla magazine and Joomla 4 marketing material, text info etc in all social and other common channels we all can help contribute to.

Joomla people never get any info of whatever happens with Joomla marketing & strategy - what to do or what’s going on. If we share this info to all Joomlers 1-2 week before the campaign, other Joomlers can help and Joomla marketing efforts will have a better larger impact on the knowledge and sharing of Joomla.

It’s a pity to have the Power of all Joomla users and not using it strategically to marketing Joomla everywhere…

[erick-b]

I dont care , I am already using alpha12/beta1 for a few website, and all is running perfectly
I wont build a new website today with J3

[deleted user]

It’s a pity to have the Power of all Joomla users and not using it strategically to marketing Joomla everywhere…

The user base doesn't exist to serve the needs of the project, and I wish people would stop talking about how end users who just want to download and use the software need to be funneled into Glip and GitHub and the volunteers portal and become active contributors to the open source software ecosystem. Newsflash, while it is to the benefit of a lot of individuals and enterprise organizations to have a healthy open source ecosystem, there is absolutely nothing wrong with people just using the software and not wanting to join the alcoholic themed beach parties that the project hosts.

As for anything else in your post, to be frank, I truly believe that Joomla doesn't care about properly marketing itself, either to its existing userbase or trying to target potential new users (and lets be realistic here, all the canned content that goes out daily on social media isn't really doing much except keeping the brand visible). It seems to think it can thrive on word of mouth marketing, except Joomla doesn't have the market presence to survive on that in the same way people now talk about wanting a WordPress as a way of saying they want a blog or a website. I've suggested for years that there needs to be more proactive blog content giving people reasons to be excited for upcoming releases, not much different from https://symfony.com/blog/category/living-on-the-edge and yet that has never gone anywhere. I know I have moaned, groaned, complained, and put in a lot of effort on my own about Joomla's lack of ambition to get outside the Joomla bubble to promote itself, with the end result of me looking like an idiot at 3 or 4 PHP conferences because Joomla is looked down upon pretty badly (an image nobody seems to care enough to address).

Someone call me when Joomla marketing gets serious about itself.

Edit: Also, someone just kill the magazine already. It's an embarrassment to the project at this point. Any content that someone would want to publish there would honestly fit in much better with any of the more visible blogs on the community and developer subdomains. And, it gets rid of a system that Joomla doesn't have the resources to keep up with, it's a win for everyone!

[sozzled]

@mbabker: I love reading what you write. I mean that sincerely.

I agree with you that there are many faults with the way that the Joomla! project—or more specifically OSM—is marketing J!. Putting those matters aside, it seems to me that this forum is not reaching one of its primary audiences (namely OSM) and I base my assumption on (a) the absence of open, honest, transparent responses OSM leaders here, on the forum, and (b) the apparent absence of engagement within J!'s project teams and OSM board to tackle these matters meaningfully.

I would dearly love to hear more from you, Michael, in order to learn more about how you feel important issues can be addressed. I understand that you probably feel exhausted after years of being ignored by some of your peers but I don't want you to lose heart. If it were possible for you to, say, give me a half an hour of your time, I would willingly listen to you. You have my permission to contact me.

[waarnemer]

...not wanting to join the alcoholic themed beach parties that the project hosts...

who says?

Must have missed these....

[Webdongle]

By complaining that their free Joomla doesn't work ... they are helping Joomla to develop.

[darb]

So the news is that its still 4 beta blockers.

https://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms/la ... %20Blocker

and problem I think its that some of them is opened long time ago and have little attention and maybe not so easy to solve? Well hope we get some info and soon to release of this beta so it create some positive energy in the whole Joomla community..

[mikerotec]

I dont care , I am already using alpha12/beta1 for a few website, and all is running perfectly
I wont build a new website today with J3

hmmm... explain to me how you accomplish this, when J12alpha has no 'extensions manager'?
How do you install even the most basic extensions/plugins, etc. for testing?

[Webdongle]

And how will you update?

[mikerotec]

OK, I guess I spoke too soon... after some digging I found a way to add a secret hidden dashboard "panel" that allowed me to activate an "alternative" menu in the back end. This 'alternative'menu appears to have all the normal backend control menus!

Question is - why was this HIDDEN, and not made the default back end menu to begin with???? I have literally ignored this project FOR MONTHS since it seems the J4 alpha backend was devoid of functionality!!!

Also, it doesn't help that all the menu items in this module are INVISIBLE unless you hover over them!

whatTheHELL-Joomla.png

[Webdongle]

...

Question is - ...

How are you going to update?

[JAVesey]

How are you going to update?

I have J4 4.0.0 Beta1-dev installed on my local machine.

Do the Update Channels work and, if so, which is the correct one to use to update?

If the Update channels don't work, what is the best way to update, or does it mean a fresh install each time at the moment?

I'm getting bored in lockdown

TIA

[Webdongle]

There is no update path from alpha or beta. The answer is he can't