We are excited to share our plans for the upcoming Crowd 6.0 Data Center platform release. As a reminder, a platform release often includes multiple breaking changes that establish the foundation for continued improvement in future 6.x feature releases.
This release primarily aims to reduce the number of exposed dependencies as well as enabling a timely and efficient resolution of security issues. Additionally, it involves upgrading the Crowd technology stack by uplifting dependencies and transitioning to Java 17. Please note that as the development of the release is underway, the specifics of breaking changes will evolve.
Predicted scope of breaking changes
This is our best estimate of areas with breaking changes at this point. Our Early Access Program releases (EAP) will contain the scope of breaking changes in Crowd 6.0 along with supporting documentation with more details and specifics. Several platform and security upgrades are planned for Crowd 6.0.
Atlassian Data Center Platform 7 upgrade
Crowd 6 will mainly focus on upgrading to the new Atlassian Data Center Platform 7. Learn more about preparing for the upgrade
Supported platform changes
Starting with this release, Crowd will use OpenJDK 17 as the default and won’t support versions 8 and 11 anymore.
Test with EAP releases
Early Access Program releases are designed to provide visibility and an opportunity to develop against the changes of the upcoming platform release. We plan to release the first EAP in Q2, 2024.
We’ll communicate ahead of the following EAP release and do our best to include most of the planned breaking changes as early as possible to give you enough time to schedule changes to your app before the official Crowd 6.0 release.
When will Crowd 6.0 arrive?
We can’t provide an exact date, but our current target to release Crowd 6.0 is Q2 or Q3, 2024.
Will there be additional resources to help us prepare?
Yes! In coordination with the EAP programs, we’ll provide more detail about breaking changes and the technical scope of Crowd 6.0. We’ll also have technical documentation detailing how to adopt the changes to Crowd. We’ll be publishing all the documentation on the Preparing for Crowd 6.0.0 page.
Will there be breaking changes to Crowd’s APIs?
Yes, and we’re still working on the full scope of breaking changes to the REST API and the Java API. As those breaking changes are scoped, we’ll add more detail to Preparing for Crowd 6.0.0 in the future.
Are there any restrictions on who has access to the EAP builds of Crowd 6.0?
No, there aren’t any restrictions. The EAP is open to everyone.
We’re looking forward to hearing your feedback.
Best,
the Crowd team