First look at Joomla! 1.6 Installer

Written by Wilco Jansen Sunday, 09 November 2008 10:00

1.6 Image made of balls taken from the pool table

In the previous 1.6 blog written by Tonie the new Access Control List (ACL) features where explained. ACL is not the only new option that will be included in 1.6, there is a list of improvements coming. The parts I am describing the first looks at the planned installer. People ask me if they can test drive the 1.6 code. If you are familiar with subversion and setting up a (local) testing environment you can install the current version of Joomla! 1.6. Keep in mind that the code is not even alpha ready, so a lot of parts are broken.

Requested improvements of the installer

When you take a look in the white paper section of the forum you will notice several posts that talk about improvements in the installer. One of the most request features is the ability to update extensions and/or you core installation files, preferable with an option to auto-detect the updates available. If possible with the validation of some dependencies.

The installer has not moved to a different location in the back-end menu so selecting the menu is as easy as it was in Joomla! 1.5 (go to extensions-->install/uninstall), but in 1.6 the options is renamed to extension manager that actually is a better term to cover what it is used for. When you select the install option you will see the following screen.

First example of the new installer

In Joomla! 1.5 you have the install option that is used to install extension. Beside the installer option you will find all possible extension type (component/module/plugin/language/template) to manage the various extensions. As you can see in the screen above some of these options have changes, let's go by these options one by one.

Install; nothing changes here, you can install extensions like you are used to in Joomla! 1.5.
Update; this is a new option that enables you to update packages. This logic is not yet implemented, but if you follow the commits that are being done you will notice the backup/restore libraries are being build. The ability to back and/or restore are required to do a error proof update because when the update fails, you want the installer to revert back to the original situation.
Manage; the individual options for the extension types has been replaces by one unified manager, see the image below for an example. You can select the extension type, but also the clean cache option. in Joomla! 1.5 the XML files that hold the meta information of extensions is read every time you manage the extension types. in Joomla! 1.6 the XML meta files are being cached, just to improve the back-end performance preventing these files to be read every time. With the clean cache option you force the back-end to reload the XML meta data files (useful when you have upgraded).
Discover; sometime extensions are just to big to upload using the web interface, most of the times due to limitations of the PHP interpreter. So people install the extensions by uploading them using ftp. The problem with that approach is that certain extension types are not registered within your Joomla! installation. With discover you will find these manually installed extensions and activate them within the CMS.
Warnings; this feature is on the drawing table, but the ideas behind it are that possible conflicts in your installation are being reported here. A possible example is that a certain dependency for an extensions fails.

Second example of the new installer

Remember that the code and examples I present here are described in a very early stage of the development. These features can change, some options can be removed totally, some can be added and the existing ones can changed. This blog just gave a first impression on what is coming in Joomla! 1.6. We keep you updated on the progression of Joomla! 1.6, so far the features we have seen look pretty promising.

This post is updated at - 2008-11-22 - with:

Dutch: Een eerste blik op Joomla! 1.6: de installer (Translation by Ruud van Zuidam)

About the author Wilco Jansen

Wilco was born in 1967 in the Netherlands where he still lives. After years of being a programmer Wilco has worked as project manager and IT manager. Discovered Joomla! when he was creating his own content management system, and never lost focus after then. Joined core team as development coordinator in May 2006 just helping to make Joomla! even better then it is already. Wilco has been deeply involved in the Joomla project as Google summer of code program manager 2006, 2007 and 2008 editions, co-organizer of the Google Highly Participation contest in 2008, first ever development coordinator, creator of the Joomla bug squad, member of the board of Open source matters, regular speaker on world wide conference advocating Joomla and much, much more. Wilco has a bachelor degree in business and information engineering and studied Master of Science knowledge and information engineering at the Middlesex University in London.

More about Wilco Jansen

There are 12 comments posted.

Re: Great post!

# 1 - Posted by: torkil on 2008-11-09 14:06:43

Update packages will be most welcome, no doubt about it!

How about discovering available updates or setting up update sites so that each extension knows where to look for updates? Any knowledge on that?

# 2 - Posted by: Wilco Jansen on 2008-11-09 14:12:13

Yes, that is part of the plans, but not fully implemented yet in the codebase.

# 3 - Posted by: ewel on 2009-01-29 08:57:19

All very promising!

Would the updating of 3rd party extensions mean that there will be some central repository? Or would there be a parameter in the xml file pointing to a download location?

Btw, how and where could I see 1.6 for myself?

Re: Joomla Extensions

# 4 - Posted by: Roel on 2009-03-15 03:22:22

I wonder why some features on the final output are somehow different. Any tips?

# 5 - Posted by: Moblie price on 2009-05-24 17:52:55

I can't see any output difference.

# 6 - Posted by: Forex Rate on 2009-05-24 17:53:54

Is there a release schedule for 1.6 anywhere?

Re: Re: 1.6 release schedule

# 7 - Posted by: Robin on 2009-05-24 18:22:07

Hi Forex Rate,

There is no set release schedule, for a current development status see http://docs.joomla.org/Joomla!_1.6_Development_Status

# 8 - Posted by: SMS on 2009-06-04 09:26:10

I think joomla will release beta in July.

Re: nice

# 9 - Posted by: http://presretac.com on 2009-08-22 13:15:21

nice article

Re: Joomla 1.6

# 10 - Posted by: EASEDesign on 2009-09-01 18:30:15

What is the difference between 1.5 and 1.6. Can I get Joomla 1.6. Where is the download link???

Re: develop docs and code in parallel

# 11 - Posted by: Nick Weavers on 2009-09-07 21:14:54

I would like to develop a component and template for Joomla 1.6 and have it ready for when Joomla 1.6 is released. It would be really great if some Joomla! 1.6 core documentation could be developed alongside the code, possibly in the wiki, or under svn control alongside the code. I mean user guide type code here, not class variable/method phpdocumentor stuff). The part which is of immediate interest is the new installer package and what now needs to go in it. Up until my last svn refresh my template was working (using the 1.5 package anatomy). Now it installs without any warnings, but when I attempt to switch to it using the Template Manager I get a warning about the template folder not being found. I am greatly appreciative of all the hard work the core developers are doing, and I think this will be a fantastic release. But if Joomla! core developers could give third party extension developers a "leg up" and help them get quality extensions ready on day one of the Joomla 1.6 release this would also be a great way to delight the community. If this is already happening, that's great too, but I google'd for quite a while and didn't come up with anything, so a few more sign posts around the forums/blogs would be very helpful.

Many thanks,

Nick Weavers

# 12 - Posted by: Exchange Rates on 2009-09-08 17:52:26

Yes, that is part of the plans.

Help for creating beautiful comments.

It's Friday - what a day to visit jfoobar!