Roadmap

5.x Branch

Interchange 5.x is the backward-compatible branch and will have new releases, both minor and major, for as long as the core team is still supporting it, most likely for many more years given the large number of serious ecommerce sites running successfully on it.

5.8.x Codename "Harp"

Major pending changes for 5.8 include improving support for UTF-8 and most recent Perl versions.

Backwards compatibility level: high.

6.x Branch

Interchange 6 is completely built new on top of modern Perl, modern Perl frameworks and CPAN modules. Rather than being a complete application server, as Interchange 5 and earlier are, it is an application built on Plack/PSGI, Dancer, CPAN modules, and requiring Perl 5.10.1 or newer, using UTF-8 throughout, etc.

6.0.x Codename "Bongo"

"Bongo" reduces the Interchange core code to the bare minimum, removing all code attributed to frameworks (sessions, authentication, templating, dispatching, etc.).

"Bongo" uses Dancer as web application framework. The flexibility, modular design and minimalist approach matches the future philosophy of Interchange.

Plugins provide additional functionality like payment gateways, coupons, shipping calculation, reviews, etc.

Interchange 6 will uploaded to CPAN and POD becomes the documentation method, complemented by a Dancer and Wiki::Toolkit based wiki.

Release of 6.0.0 is scheduled for July 2012.

Backwards compatibility level: low.