Upgrading to v9 - Handling Assets

After the announcement that v8 is going to be EOL at the end of this year we are starting to attempt upgrading some of our sites to v9 and one of the biggest hurdles that we’re running into is the moving/dropping of the core assets.

Is there documentation somewhere of which assets from here A list of all assets and asset groups defined by Concrete CMS are still available, no longer available, or moved to Features?

Is there documentation anywhere that tells which Features contain which Assets?

Is there any direction from the core team about how upgrades that are currently using core assets in v8 can be “easily” migrated to the v9?

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@hunterwebs I added this as a discussion topic for the Town Hall next week.

@jessicadunbar I think you mentioned the wrong account with your reply. I think you wanted to mention @hutman instead?

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@jessicadunbar Thank you, I will be interested to hear how we’re supposed to proceed with this, it was my understanding that the v9 upgrade was supposed to be “easy” but I have not been finding that to be the case at all.

@jessicadunbar Andrew did not answer my question, he didn’t address upgrading to v9 with an already existing set of blocks and theme and what to do about the v8 assets that are just completely gone.

If anybody else has ideas on this I would love to hear them. As of now I guess I’m just including all of these assets in my packages and cursing the major version upgrades and lack of documentation … again.

@hutman I’ll see what I can find out.

@hutman @jessicadunbar
Yes, you have to include those assets manually in package/theme/block.
There is no such list (as far as I know), but I agree there should be one in docs.

Those missing assets don’t throw an error/they fail silently so it can be hard to debug it.
Comprehensive list would at least inform/warn about those breaking changes.

Since version 9 embraced PHP8 I would also add small paragraph about fixing common PHP8 errors. Mostly undefined variable/array key not existing.
Like adding isset()/!empty() in code or protected $variable; at the top of block controller.

Maybe also add some general info about Bootstrap3->Bootstrap5 changes (like breakpoints has changed). Link to Bootstrap Migration page would be enough I guess.

Look at Migrating to v5 · Bootstrap v5.0. Info about changes between versions is easily accessible from front page of docs (since it’s kinda important).
Maybe similar page exists somewhere in docs. I recall only finding info about app->make() changes, but that’s all.

Perhaps the docs need a table of assets with columns for v8 and v9 and notes where the asset exists in one but not in the other.

An updated Asset List is what I would like to see. Some indication of x asset exists in v8 but does not exist in v9 or it still exists in v9 but it’s part of y Feature.

@hutman, I’ve started this document in response to your question. I’ve tried to provide some links from the Assets to related Features on this appendix page about Assets. I also added a notice at the top of that page about the change to Features.

The pages are editable by any registered user, so feel free to expand or adjust as needed. I know it doesn’t completely address the need for documenting these changes, but it’s a start.

As for your specific question about what do with assets that no longer exist in v9, certain things were removed because they’re bundled with the CMS JS/CSS and really shouldn’t be referenced on the front end. Could you provide some specific examples of the assets you are referring to?

But if there are things like image slider JS/CSS that you need in a theme or add-on, then @Parasek’s response seems correct.

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Thanks for the info.
You have a referenced page:

“View files on GitHub:” Your links to Github do not point to Github, the point to the same page.

Hi all,

Bumping this topic to mention that there is also the option to remain on v8 (since it will be being maintained with security fixes) and staying on PHP 7.4 LTS. More information on that here:

@kfog you are correct about the links on the ‘Assets and Features :: Concrete CMS’ page not pointing to Github, I would recommend in future that if you want to get the attention of a particular member you should ‘mention’ them by username as in @EvanCooper

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Thanks for the heads up @kfog ! I’ve fixed those and sent some badges your way for helping out. Cheers.

Thanks @ConcreteOwl !