November Update on Upcoming Breaking Changes across Server Products

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Building upon last month’s blog, we have an update on our plans to ship breaking changes across Server Products. While plans often change, we do our best to be open about our work so the Atlassian Ecosystem can plan ahead to ensure a smooth experience for our customers. We’ve consolidated these updates into a single, easy to digest, post and will provide monthly updates until the end of the year.

AUI

The final version of AUI 8.0 has been released. Consult the changelog for a consolidated list of differences in this release, and the upgrade guides for more detailed information.

AUI 8.x will receive development and maintenance throughout FY19. AUI 7.x will receive occasional updates and maintenance throughout FY19.

Found a bug? Raise a ticket in the AUI project on our Ecosystem Jira.

Bitbucket Server

We have some exciting new features lined up for the Bitbucket Server 6.0, with a planned release in late January, 2019. We also plan to release an Early Access Program (EAP) Bitbucket Server 6.0 release, including all breaking changes, in the first week or so of 2019.

For one of the features in Bitbucket Server 6.0, we need to deprecate direct access to repositories on disk for apps. You can find all the necessary details in the API changelog. We’re also going to remove the notification handler plugin point, and the related notification API. When you need to send notifications just listen for the event you are interested in using a listener based on that specific event, and get the recipients via com.atlassian.bitbucket.watcher.WatcherService to send notifications.

We’re going to add support for Java 11 in Bitbucket Server 6.0, as Java 8 is reaching end of life in January, 2019. After Java 8 reaches end of life, unless an Oracle Java 8 subscription is purchased, no further fixes, including security patches, will be available for it. As a core dependency for Bitbucket Server, such patches are critical, so we’re adding support for Java 11.

We’ll also end support for PostgreSQL 9.2, which has been deprecated since the Bitbucket Server 5.7 release (see the supported platforms page for details).

We’re going to end support for all versions of Git prior to Git 2.11:

  • Versions prior to Bitbucket Server 6.0 support Git 2.2.0 and newer, excluding Git 2.12.2 on Windows (see the supported platforms page for details).
  • After 6.0 we will require Git 2.11.0 or newer, excluding Git 2.12.2 on Windows.

Starting from Bitbucket Server 6.0 custom file handlers will no longer be used for rendering diffs, only for source views. For adding extra information to the diff gutter we will no longer support DiffView.registerGutter. Instead we recommend using Code Insights to add extra information to the diff.

Confluence Server

Confluence 6.13 is nearly here, and will bring with it support for AdoptOpenJDK 8. This will ensure that customers have an alternative to the paid Oracle JDK from 2019. Full Java 11 support is planned to be delivered with Confluence 7.0 sometime in 2019.

We have also added the ability to permanently delete a user account and anonymise the personally identifiable information associated with it. If your app displays people’s names or usernames (think places like mentions, or the page byline), you should test how it behaves when a user has been deleted. Check out the Beta release notes and Preparing for Confluence 6.13 for more details. Confluence 6.13 will also be the next designated Enterprise release.

We are continuing our work on the TinyMCE editor upgrade from 3.x to 4.x. This has been ongoing for some time now and hopefully everyone has checked their apps for compatibility. If not, check out how to test your add on with the upgraded TinyMCE4 editor. It will not be coming in 6.13, however we are still oh so close.

Confluence Server 7.0 scope and timing is currently under review. We’re still refining what other goodies will be included but are strongly contemplating upgrading Guava and removing deprecated JS Globals. We will be removing some very old and deprecated code from 1.x through 4.x releases. We will unlikely be removing the already deprecated SOAP/XML-RPC methods at this time.

We are also working on a new Search experience to replace the existing Quick Search experience (what is quick search?). If you have an app which modified interacts with the search experience then keep an eye on the upcoming EAP page for updates.

Jira Software

We are continuing our work on Jira Software 8.0. The release has now been moved to end of January 2019.

If you haven’t started following our Jira Software 8.0 EAP program, we highly recommend taking a look at the most recently released version. More information on the 8.0 Early Access Program can be found here.

The Jira Software 8.0 release will include:

  • Improvements to the search sub-system via a Lucene upgrade
  • Frontend improvements such as jQuery library updates and deprecation of global variables in favor of AMD modules (for more details, see this post (private marketplace vendor forum))
  • Agile and Kanban board performance improvements
  • An upgrade to use new Java 11-compatible platform components and libraries
  • Several other end-user features, which will be unveiled closer to the release

8.0 Beta and Release Candidate

The beta version of 8.0 is expected to be released in the first week of December. This version will be feature complete but as we discover and fix bugs, some changes might still happen.

We expect to release a Release Candidate version roughly two weeks before the final release. This will be the same build we plan to release as the final version, and will give an opportunity to app vendors to test with the final release build before it goes out to customers.

Java 11

Jira 8.0 will be working with Oracle JDK 8 and OpenJDK 11. This means that Java 11 features will not be supported in the source code (Java 8 compatibility mode). Hence, we will only announce limited Java 11 support without making Jira officially compatible with Java 11 until a future 8.x release. This will give app vendors time to update their products before we announce official compatibility with Java 11. Most likely, this will take place sometime in Q1 2019. After we announce the official compatibility with Java 11, we will also strive to have OpenJDK 11 bundled with the Jira installer.

Jira Service Desk Server

The teams continue work on Jira Service Desk 4.0. This shall be released along with Jira Software 8.0. We do recommend taking a look at the most recently released Jira Service Desk EAP versions, here.

Questions?

Please raise a ticket in the Ecosystem Developer Service Desk