Branching your Autoupdate Notifier for 2.9.x

Since having already noted that upcoming Styx Next is a major upgrade (see 2.9.0 post), which will require a modern PHP 7 version, we have to give some Important Notes about branches and future upgrades.

The current alpha state of the masters branch NEXT Development already requires PHP 7.1.3 as the absolute Minimum. This may even raise up to a required PHP 7.3.x version before (beta) release(s) in the next few months, in 2019/20. If you still are on Debian 9 last stable Stretch for example, you actually have a PHP 7.0.x version running that will not change until a Debian 10 Buster upgrade is performed. Even though it is possible to upgrade such a system to a newer PHP version, even provided by its Maintainer, some of you have or want to stick to PHP 5.6 or PHP 7.0 a little longer.

Serendipity Styx 3.0 does not only require an up-to-date PHP version, it also requires PHP/GD/ImageMagick with --webp support and an openSSL version which is at least a Debian Buster version like 1.1.1d for strongest login encryption! DO NOT use upcoming 3.0 on a system less than Debian Buster (10)!

To not get in conflict with the upcoming major 3.0 upgrade(s), you have to set up a new Update-RELEASE-file URL in your Backend Configuration Panel. Open Configuration - General Settings - and see the option Update RELEASE-file URL. There you add this new URL, pointing to the branch RELEASE file and submit the form: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ophian/styx/styx2.9/docs/RELEASE

Now you will only get future update request notes if a new branch release, like (next) 2.9.2 is prepared to supply. If you then are ready for upcoming Styx 3.0 Next, you just change it back to the master branch at: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ophian/styx/master/docs/RELEASE

A word about (server) Distribution politics for the ImageMagick graphics package and new exciting image formats!

There are two current versions of ImageMagick, the LTS-alike version 6, which will be supported for another 7+ years and the rewrite version 7, being a little more strict and which becomes new features and enhancements etc. This will give legacy applications more time to upgrade to version 7.

The current stable Debian 9 "stretch" is running IM 6.9.7.x, while upcoming Debian 10 "buster" and "sid" are at IM 6.9.10.x versions. That means, it seems that even for dist-upgrades the next ~5 years there will be no change, without giving the opportunity to run both versions co-existing in your environment. Same issue for Centos/Fedora or Ubuntu. Fedora Devs stated to support the co-existing tooling, so that migration is at least possible over the years.

Serendipity Styx does already support ImageMagick 7 processing.

WebP support is another thing coming up. As you might have noticed, bigger web sites already use WebP images more and more. WebP is a new image format developed by Google, which is both, lossy and lossless. WebP-related software is released under a BSD license. It is a sister Project of VP8 video and WebM multimedia formats. I am truly convinced that this will be the NEW open standard for lossy compressed true-color graphics on the web in the near future, producing much smaller files of comparable image quality to the older JPEG and PNG schemes. There are limitation as ever, since you need a browser to support it - well, and the good thing is the most already do - and you need PHP builds enabled --with-webp, you need either PHP GD having it enabled (see gd_info()) or ImageMagick build with webP support, which is ready for Debian 10 since 6.9.10.23+dfsg-1 version (see above).

Unwilling to wait?

You can do one thing about it now. Load the free available tool cwebp and pre convert your images to the new format before you upload them to your blog. If you then have PHP 7 with GD enabled WebP support or even the mentioned IM (or better) versions, then you can already use WebP in your Styx MediaLibrary with success. If not, you cannot create an upload auto thumb of this format for the moment and probably have to wait until Styx will release the next major version 3.0.

You’ve come a long way, ... what a fortunate stroke of serendipity !

Its time to give an update of development and the future plans for Serendipity. Upcoming Serendipity Styx 2.8 revision will be the last update for the old and outdated PHP 5 Series and future 2.8.x dot versions will only address security or real bug fixes.

Serendipity Styx 2.8.0 will prepare the core system themes for consistency and to easily live in these modern “mobile-device” times without breaking too much for fallback or engine depend themes.

Then Serendipity Styx will strongly jump right to 3.0 and will further only support PHP 7 Editions. And it will be (much more) “feature” complete. 🙂

I sat for years and found you saying:
Never mind old chap, I will resist
kill my bugs, that still persist!