We’re working on SuiteCRM 7.10 and I’d like to share some of the key points for this release.
Although we can’t always provide a proper response to all request and feedback, we ARE listening to you, and finally with 7.10 we have a chance of addressing a few things that have been longstanding Community concerns:
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It will be a release directed at stability, aiming to merge as much of our PR backlog as possible (this means: no new unnecessary features)
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Reworking the SuiteP theme spacing to make it more compact.
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Providing a choice of colours for SuiteP Theme. For 7.10, this will be a menu with a handful of Colour Schemes for all tastes. Later, a more detailed editor can be added.
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Establish automated testing and unit testing.
We really hope these improvements will contribute to the quality of SuiteCRM and will be a great preparation for the future 8.0 Release that will follow.
You’re welcome to give us some feedback but this is a work in progress … the time for real feedback will be in a couple of months. But we’ll give you regular updates and try to keep everyone in the loop.
The process for this release will also be the most ambitious we’ve tried yet in terms of Community involvement. We know our limited resources slow us down, and growing our team takes time. But we also know there are thousands of you out there, willing to help.
We’re adding some automated tests, but for a product this big, test coverage will not be complete initially. So we’re also aiming to do much more human testing, since our objectives for PR merging will touch virtually all areas of the app. All the PR’s we’ve been hesitant to merge because of the limitations of our test processes, we’ll try to get into this Release, and make sure this one is tested especially thoroughly.
We will have a Beta 1, a Beta 2, and a Release Candidate, but we will try to keep some control on exactly who’s downloading and who’s testing which parts of the app, so the end result is more guaranteed (lesson from 7.9!).
Some time in September or October we will open a Registration for Community Testing for Beta 1 & 2 Testers. We’re still getting this organized and I’ll provide more details later. Of course we’ll have to make a proposal to the Community and then hear what sort of contribution you think you can provide.
I also want to let you know Ashley (samus-aran) will be on leave for the next few months but we look forward to having her back early in 2018.
7.10 will be our most Community-based Release yet, and hopefully is a sign of the maturation of this project:
- goals come essentially from Community feedback
- merged code finally gets many Community contributions into the product
- Community involvement in testing makes it possible to try an audacious release
As I wrote elsewhere, we are growing up in public. Nobody in SalesAgility has led an open source project before. We are learning as we go. I thank you for your patience, contributions and encouragement. I hope this release proves that what you tell us makes a difference.