I love the lively discussion about XOOPS 2.6.0 and the excitement!
First, Trabis did a tremendous job refactoring and cleaning the Core! I tested it couple of days ago on PHP 5.4 RC1 in E_STRICT mode, and it had only 1 small error related to magic quotes, which Trabis will fix. Otherwise NO errors! This an example of the quality that Trabis delivers! So as you can see, XOOPS 2.6.0 will be PHP 5.4 compliant and E_STRICT compliant, and free of any PHP 4 and XOOPS 1 old ancient code! As we all know: Trabis simply ROCKS!!!
It will be also the lightest and fastest XOOPS ever, with the lowest memory requirements. Simply the "leanest and meanest" version of XOOPS ever!
But first things first!
We need to release XOOPS 2.5.4, hopefully in the next few days. This will be probably the last version in the 2.5.x series. All current modules should work without any significant problems there.
Then, once Trabis is done with the refactoring, we will release 2.6.0 Alpha 0. This will be just a refactored Core, with no new features. It will be our "reference" point, a baseline to test modules and making sure that the refactoring is being done correctly.
Once we test it and identify any issues, there will be decision on how to refactor modules, and which ones.
The Core team is also looking at the long list of the features suggested by the community, and it will make suggestions on how incorporate them into the Core, and it what sequence. They are looking at RMCommon from Eduardo and XMF (XOOPS Module Framework) from Trabis, and few other things (like plugins/widgets), to come up with architecture and features that will make module development much, much easier that it is today.
But we need to go one step at a time, and make sure that we have the right architecture. So I wouldn't focus yet on any module updates for XOOPS 2.6.0, because a lot of things will change, as the work is still very fluid -
remember, there is not even Alpha 0 released yet Once we have the new architecture in place, then we can look at the modules, and provide clear guidelines on how to refactor/upgrade existing modules.
So let's be patient, contribute more ideas about features that you would like to see in XOOPS 2.6.0, but let's focus now on making sure that we have:
- stable XOOPS 2.5.4 (please test, test, test and help us fix bugs)
- help us with "Basic Module Pack" (please test, test, test and help us fix bugs)
- update/upgrade to Blue Move any other older modules
The most important thing: as you can see from the 2.6.0 refactoring, we have now a great Core team, which is doing tremendous work with improving quality of XOOPS Core that will help us to move XOOPS to the 21st century and be again on the frontline of development.