The sixth alpha: enter the territory of dead bugs

We’re almost there! SilverStripe 4.0.0-alpha6 is out and eagerly waiting for those on the edge to try it out. We thought this would be a small release to smooth out some rough edges in SilverStripe 4.0.0-alpha5, but it turned out to be another standard release with big changes. Oops, sorry but not sorry.

To get setup, you can install this using composer:

  composer create-project silverstripe/installer ./ss40 4.0.0-alpha6

You can also get pre-built zip/tar from the download section.

The Open Sourcerers team has laid down the tracks with this release. Things are looking really exciting and we hope everyone will join the ride. We’ve split more modules out of the framework and improved stabilisation internally.

As with any alpha release, this is not a standard release, so we do not recommend using this build for any production websites. Anyone is free to try this release out and give feedback to us. Any assistance will help us get closer to a more bug-free release when we go stable.

Notable changes

Improved caching

We’ve worked hard to track down cache errors which appeared in SilverStripe 4.0.0-alpha5, which stopped a few people from trying it out (thank you to those that reported it). The bugs have been swept out, and now it works even better than before – dare I say faster.

DateField

You know how we refactored setConfig() to feature specific methods such as setShowCalendar(). Well, now they’re both removed. We’ve refactored DateField to be compatible with the browser’s HTML5 date input feature. So in modern browsers, you’ll see the HTML5 date functionality. Older browsers will show a normal textfield.

If you do not want the feature, you can easily turn it off by calling setHTML5.

Modules that split out

These modules being split out does not have a giant impact like the previous ones did. It’s still worth noting that it will require a /dev/build?flush=1 to rebuild the class manifest.

• Assets – APIs for managing files
• Versioned – API for versions of DataObjects
• Admin – Now framework no longer comes with a default admin module, letting framework be a framework
• Campaign admin – An interface for managing ChangeSets

Config yaml classes updated

Classes that are in config.yml files have been updated to the new Namespace paths now. It could affect you if you’re extending a framework or core module class. Keep your eyes open for extensions that stop working!

Insert OEmbed modal

The feature disappeared when the new Insert media modal was implemented. Now it’s back and looking much better. (Yes, I watched that video when I got home.)

Conclusion

SilverStripe 4.0.0-alpha6 proved to be very exciting for us in the Open Sourcerers team. We are looking to get more out before we hit the beta stage.

Thanks to everyone who have tried out any of the alphas and given us feedback. For those that haven’t tried it yet, hope you will soon!