The next major release of Umbraco is version 9 is scheduled to be released at the end of August this year. The Beta version has been around since the spring and has been out being tested, so that any obvious glitches can be ironed out.
Since the launch of the Beta version, the team at Umbraco has been working on how packages are handled in Umbraco and the most significant change has been to the package format and installation process.
The company explains: “Due to technical changes in the underlying web framework, we can no longer make a stable package format that supports DLL files, if packages have to be installed during runtime. Instead, we have decided to go with the built-in package format for dotnet - NuGet packages.”
From Umbraco 9, NuGet will be the standard (and only) way of creating and installing packages in Umbraco, which the company says should make it easier to document how to create, publish and maintain packages going forward.
Switching exclusively to NuGet does bring about some challenges, such as lack of support for content installation, discoverability/installation through the back office, and more. However, these have all been addressed through a new concept called Package Migrations. These are very similar to the migrations that Umbraco uses, but the solution can configure whether or not to execute these unattended, during start-up or manually from the package section.
Package migrations can be used where packages normally have been using the original migrations, but it will also be possible to use Package Migrations to load an XML-doc with Umbraco content.
Umbraco 9 boasts all features and functionality available in Umbraco 8.13. As you’d imagine, there are some new features and these include:
* Framework updated from .NET Framework 4.7.2 to .NET 5.
* Web-framework updated from ASP.NET 4 to ASP.NET Core 5.
* User and Member authentication updated to ASP.NET Core Identity.
* Third-party dependencies updated or replaced.
Ahead of the August release date, the team at Umbraco are ‘fixing potential bugs in the CMS and the HQ packages, while also focusing on making Umbraco 9 available on Umbraco Cloud and continue the efforts to document Umbraco 9 with the Documentation Curators’. Finally, they will continue to merge new features from Umbraco 8 into Umbraco 9.
The company adds: “With Umbraco 9, you can look forward to better performance and scalability, clean(er) architecture, compatibility options with MacOS, Linux, and Microsoft Windows - basically, a more delightful and modern Umbraco under the hood.”
If you want to know more about the advantages of switching to Umbraco 9, then call us here at Lake Solutions on tel: 020 3397 3222.