Help to understand the difference in architecture between Suite7 and Suite8

SuiteCRM Forum - English Language SuiteCRM General Discussion
1

I’m an ‘enthusiast’ and have spent a long time trying to get to grips with coding, customising, and understanding how SuiteCRM works.

I was hoping to transfer those skills to Suite8; and prepared to put in the time to learn a new architecture.
However there doesn’t seem to be a simple overview of the changes ?

Are there any guides available to help those like me?

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The problem with documenting complex and extensive code changes is that only the developers know how to do it. And if the developers are just a few, and there are team changes, and there is a LOT of work still left to be done… documentation gets left behind.

But of course, a community like ours with so many developers, needs documentation, and I agree with your request. Those of us who make some progress understanding Suite8 should go ahead and add documentation, even if it doesn’t seem like much.

A few basics:

  • SuiteCRM 7 lives inside SuiteCRM 8 (public/legacy).
  • the different systems (old vs new) kick in module by module, and it’s configurable. You can revert specific modules back to the legacy engine, to keep your custom code working.
  • all the UI now goes through the GraphQL API. So, while in SuiteCRM 7 the UI and the add-ons used Beans directly, and only external systems used the API, now everything attaches to the API layer.
  • SuiteCRM 8 is based on Symfony and you can learn a lot by studying generic Symfony stuff, like the auto-wiring of services, the Doctrine DB engine, etc.
  • read existing code to find out how things are done: the new modules typically use YAML files describing the Angular UI and you can try a few things by copying what is there and adapting to your needs.
1 Like
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Thanks pgr,
I hope i didn’t come across as complaining, and realise that documentation is a project in itself. But any documentation at all is a great help when you’re in the dark.

Do you know how long will v7 be supported in the legacy folder?

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I guess nobody knows the answer to that. They’ll just keep replacing SuiteCRM 7 parts until all of them are gone. I suspect it might take a long time.