Future of MODX?

in the german forum I read something about a live chat which happened on wednesday, 6th February.
Ryan, Jason and Jay had taken part and discussed with MODX users.

some notes in short sentences (not complete):

• no php 5.4 for Evo, but security patches yes
• concentration on MODX 3 (expected in 2013)
• will MODX 3 based on Revo 2.*? No! complete rewrite
• upgrade tool Evo --> Revo? no
• ...

I'm a little surprised, found nothing about this topic here in the forum.
Means, at end of the year we will have 3 different MODX system?? Not compatible together, not upgradeable??
And also a lot more of FAQ, documentation, tutorial chaos (all different)??

Provocative question: does it make sense for users to keep on learning/working with Revo 2?
Also to mention, some of the experienced users have already moved to other cms for this reason.

so the discussion is opened...

No php 5.4 for Evo, but security patches yes

It is too early in the life cycle of Evo to make such a decision. It´s gonna hurt just too many sites still running on Evo. As I already suggested earlier, the Team can make a payed Evo with php 5.4. This will be a win win situation for everybody until the end of a realistic life cycle of Evo.

Quote from: manfred62 at Feb 11, 2013, 01:51 PM

in the german forum I read something about a live chat which happened on wednesday, 6th February.
Ryan, Jason and Jay had taken part and discussed with MODX users.

some notes in short sentences (not complete):

• no php 5.4 for Evo, but security patches yes
• concentration on MODX 3 (expected in 2013)
• will MODX 3 based on Revo 2.*? No! complete rewrite
• upgrade tool Evo --> Revo? no
• ...

I'm a little surprised, found nothing about this topic here in the forum.
Means, at end of the year we will have 3 different MODX system?? Not compatible together, not upgradeable??
And also a lot more of FAQ, documentation, tutorial chaos (all different)??

Provocative question: does it make sense for users to keep on learning/working with Revo 2?
Also to mention, some of the experienced users have already moved to other cms for this reason.

so the discussion is opened...

First of all, I want to say, there are no absolutes on most of the noted points you are including here. Someone may provide a pull request to fix Evo on 5.4. There may or may not be a migration tool from Evo to Revo developed.

But more importantly, it absolutely makes sense for users to keep learning/working with MODX Revolution 2.x releases. Are there going to be BC (backwards compatibility) breaks in a new major release of MODX? Certainly. Will they be as drastic as between Evo and Revo? Doubtful. The 2.x releases always were in my mind, a stepping stone to get MODX from where it started to where I hoped it would go, and to start solidifying an API that could better withstand changes to specific data structures.

We're not simply going to throw away all the lessons learned from developing MODX 2.x as we continue moving forward, attempting to stay relevant technologically and too our existing users, while trying to increase adoption of the product.

manfred62, just to add a tiny bit more, I think a lot got lost in translation. Nothing was set in stone, but our general thoughts and approaches were discussed.

More importantly, we stated there would be additional calls in the near future with more of the Community on them. That's an important part of the process going forward. Huge in fact!

There won't be a one-click-guaranteed to work Evo to Revo tool. There most likely will be one that gets all your content and TV values, and translates your tags for you. Some things would need to be adjusted, like replacing Ditto with GetResources, but your important content would be preserved.

We'll make sure to post something in the Forum next time one happens and I hope you can attend.

As Jason said, definitely keep on with Revo.

sitecms, would be very interested in discussing your idea offline.

Since it is an Open Source project, anyone could develop an Evo to Revo migration tool (in fact, there already is one called "Provisioner" that might be updated). I've thought about doing one, but there isn't much point until MODX 3 is out.

It's my hope that MODX 3 will have the best features of both Evo and Revo and that it will be an obvious first choice for all users. I expect that almost all the concepts that we learn using Revo will still apply in MODX 3 (with the exception of the Security/Permissions system).

Indeed. Even as much as I hate change, in switching from Evo to Revo I have never felt that my years with Evo were in any way wasted. While the underlying core code may be different, it's still doing the same things (except for user management!), only differently, in arguably better ways. The CMS itself still works in the same way. If you know what it's doing, it just takes a little more effort (or better tools) to find out how it's doing it. If I had the eyes that I did even three years ago I'd be as knowledgeable about Revo as I was about Evo by now. There won't be any difference in this with MODx 3.

The only thing that alarmed me about this in Utrecht was somebody grumbling about Ruby, but that wasn't serious. Now perl I just might go for...in fact, a MODx port to perl would be a blast! Or even C. Betcha that would be one fast CMS. Assembly language, anybody?

Having come from C++, I looked into using C++ for web programming some time ago. The consensus at the time seemed to be that there wasn't much speed advantage unless you were offloading complex mathematical calculations or graphics. I don't know if that has changed.