SuiteCRM 7.14 & 8.4 are now available to download
For both of these releases we have updated support for PHP8.2 and upgraded Smarty, the templating engine used in SuiteCRM, to V4.
But that’s not all!! We have also included many UI and developer improvements into SuiteCRM 8.4 - Redesigned Nav Bar, Floating Save and Module Specific Dropdown functionality.
To find out more about the above features within these releases, please check out the following Release Notes:
Just wondering, will there be any more 7.12 releases?
Hi @lazka,
SuiteCRM 7.12 is currently only being supported for security fixes up until the end of this year. Therefore, any security issues that need to be resolved, will also be done in 7.12 and released as required.
Thanks
The announcement refers to helping find bugs and the developer links all refer to building our own forked repos. I know php but I do not know how to create a forked repo and duplicate the environment you guys are working with. Is there a way to use Github codespace with a pre-defined packaged environment so we can fork and test on codespace? That’s what many others are doing since the ability was introduced in Spring 2023. Maybe someone on the team could share the setup and then we can avoid testing servers and using our own boxes. It would really speed up testing and bring more people into debugging.
HI @pjdm
Codespaces is an interesting idea - I have no experience of it, do you use it for other projects? Regards SuiteCRM is there a specific bug or feature on your mind now, that you would work on, if CodeSpaces existed.
It would be good to make it easier for more people to contribute bug fixes and features: but I wonder how many people would use it?
Would you be willing to open a new thread and ask if others have interest? If we can get a few together, than maybe some folks will volunteer to make this happen? SalesAgility have alot of work already to do on SuiteCRM, so this could be a chance for the community to give back?
I think codespace would be a big help. To test now you need a vm or server and guess which php version, Linux version and development parameters. Those could all be preset then you simply go to codespace and spin up a fully working forked version of suitecrm with debug included. This all done on GitHub and no vm or server or desktop is needed. Play around, fix a bug, submit a pull request and contribute.
Do a search for phpbb and codespace. This is a new feature this year on GitHub.
I would use it if the developers setup the environment files or listed the environment to be used so everyone is on the same page.
Is codespaces based on Docker?
I believe SalesAgility already has that sort of dockerfiles ready to shoot SuiteCRM’s of all sizes and shapes - PHP versions, SuiteCRM versions, etc
This GitHub codespace is already a Docker container. What you should do is define a devcontainer config along with a docker-compose config (Bitnami has them for 7.x and for 8.x), and then just create a new GitHub codespace from your devcontainer config.
the problem with the bitnami containers is the php version is wrong. If someone could create a docker container with the proper developer requirements then everyone could test, debug and do PRs. But, we need a proper container that reflects the latest software and bitnami doesn’t do that AFAIK. I wish this came from the maintainers but if someone can show us how to start using codespace to get the latest version up with debug capability and the proper PHP mysql/mariadb settings it would really accelerate things.
@pjdm How are you getting wrong php versions from the bitnami containers for 7.14.1 and 8.4.1?
Here, my containers are showing:
# php -v
PHP 8.1.24 (cli) (built: Oct 6 2023 09:46:32) (NTS)
Copyright (c) The PHP Group
Zend Engine v4.1.24, Copyright (c) Zend Technologies
with Zend OPcache v8.1.24, Copyright (c), by Zend Technologies
php 8.1.24 meets the requirements in the compatibility matrix for both 7.14.1 and 8.4.1.
Today it does meet the requirements but that is new and only because v8.4 caught up to php 8.1 and 8.2. Previously the Bitnami containers were loaded with v8 that could not support 8.1 so it was an automatic failure and you can’t modify them, or at least I was unable.
The better solution is to rely on Suitecrm’s GitHub code space with developer approved containers that everyone can debug and produce PRs with. That allows the code to flow with the branch approved by the developers and not the older public versions used by Bitnami. Then each of us is working the correct branch, using consistent environment and hopefully submitting PRs that then get tested with existing code to ensure nothing breaks.
I agree Birman now is a good start. If you can spin bitnami up with debugging please show us how so we can all pitch in and help with the PRs. Thanks for updating.
In Github, I guess you can always fork the project, and then do your own work setting up the Codespaces, it should work. You would just have to periodically update your fork to keep it in sync with the upstream project (SuiteCRM itself).
This could be a nice way of the community helping out by solving any Codespace problems until there is confidence that it’s working and then maybe the team can adopt that in the main repo.