Will 0.9.6.x and 0.9.7+ become sepearate branches?

It seems to me that with all the core changes in 0.9.7 and eventually in 1.0 that 0.9.6.x will end up as a sub branch. Since some main snippets will need to be reworked I guess that this will mean that snippets will have multiple versions and that there will be some other issues that will be specific between the versions. Based on the seemingly large number of users who are still using 0.9.5 I believe that many people will not make the switch to 0.9.7+ at first and depending on the issues involved maybe won’t for a while. So this would mean that snippet developers will also need to consider which version they will support which will most likely be the version they currently use.

I guess my question is will the 0.9.6 branch continue to be supported after 0.9.7+ are released? I mean will there ever be a 0.9.6.2 if needed? Just wondering what the plan is regarding this or if this is even a real concern.

As far as I know, yes, 0.9.6+ will continue to be supported. And it is quite likely that a large user group will continue using that branch, including adding new snippets and modules.

On a personal note, I know that it will be quite some time before I am able to get a good understanding of the new core, and will be continuing to use and develop for the 0.9.6 branch... and partly, at least, out of preference, since all this newfangled OOP and ORB and what-have-you will be somewhat painful for me to wrap my poor creaky brain around. I’m still at the point where when I read most of Jason’s posts on the subject I’m thinking "huh?" And the xPDO documentation gives me a headache. Besides, I’ve been working with the current core for years now, and tend to get comfortable with what I’m familiar with. And it does work very nicely for what I mostly need to do.

0961 is going to be released very soon. Jason and I have already discussed some things for 0962 to address the automatic alias creation and likely some other things. In short, the original code branch will continue to be maintained for security, bugfixes and possibly even some features/functionality improvements.

097 is a totally new project with a totally separate SVN repository branch. (096 will remain in it’s own branch.) 096x is a robust and reliable platform that’s the right solution for a lot of sites. We do not intend to abandon our legacy code-base users.

097 will provide facilities to upgrade your content, but as you mentioned most of the resources will need to be modified to work fully with the new core and parser. These resource updates are primarily centered around with updating the MODx resource "tokens" (e.g., changing [*TV*] to [[*TV]]), and updating any code that uses internal parser methods.