First alpha of Plone 6.1 released

[mauritsvanrees]

We have released the first alpha version of Plone 6.1!

Actually, it was released almost two weeks ago, but I waited with officially announcing it. I was waiting on the Docker image for the backend. It is still not ready yet, but let's not wait longer: Docker is not the only way to install Plone.

Release notes for Plone 6.1.0a1

• Released: Friday January 26, 2024.
• Check the release schedule.
• Read the upgrade guide, explaining the biggest changes compared to 5.2.
  Yes, we need to start on a 6.1 upgrade guide.
• Canonical place for these release notes and the full packages changelog.

If you want to jump straight in, here are two important links:

• With pip you can use the constraints file at https://dist.plone.org/release/6.1.0a1/constraints.txt, plus optionally constraints-extra.txt and constraints-ecosystem.txt. Note: in 6.0 we did not have these last two files. This may still change.
• With Buildout you can use the versions file at https://dist.plone.org/release/6.1.0a1/versions.cfg, plus optionally versions-extra.cfg and versions-ecosystem.cfg.

Highlights

Major changes since 6.0.9:

• Some packages have become "core add-ons". They are no longer a dependency of Products.CMFPlone, but of Plone:
  • plone.app.multilingual
  • For plone.app.discussion this is being prepared, but is not there yet.
• No longer let Products.CMFPlone depend on the deprecated plone.app.widgets.
  The package still exists, and can be used, but it only has backwards compatibility imports that get the real code from their new canonical places, mostly plone.app.z3cform.
  If your add-on uses this, you should explicitly depend on it.
  You are encouraged to update your import statements to the canonical places instead. These should work on both Plone 6.0 and 6.1.
• Products.CMFPlone:
  • Add plone-61 as zcml feature, and define PLONE61MARKER as True.
  • Explicitly disable Products.CMFCore.explicitacquisition in Plone 6.
  • Do not use UniqueObject class for PlonePortal
• plone.staticresources and plonetheme.barceloneta: Update TinyMCE to version 6.
• plone.app.z3cform:
  • Add row container to enable column layouts for fields with wrapper_css_class.
  • Implement new z3c.form extensible attributes feature and cleanup widget templates using Chameleon interpolation.
• plone.restapi:
  • Translate validation error messages in the deserializer.
  • Give Site Administrator permission to manage users. To make this possible, we now check the "plone.app.controlpanel.UsersAndGroups" permission instead of "cmf.ManagePortal" in a lot of operations in the users and groups endpoints.

Volto frontend

The default frontend for new Plone 6 sites is Volto. Latest release is 17.11.4. See the changelog.
Note that this is a JavaScript frontend that you need to run in a separate process with NodeJS.

Also, existing Plone sites need some or more extensive changes to be upgraded before they can use the Volto Frontend. Please read the guide on migrating from Plone Classic UI to Volto.

Classic UI

The HTML based and server side rendered UI that was present in Plone 5.2 and earlier major Plone releases is still available and has also been updated and improved upon in Plone 6. Our documentation now refers to this frontend as 'Classic UI'. Support for Classic UI is especially relevant for existing Plone sites which for whatever reason or requirements are not yet ready to be upgraded to the Volto frontend.

Python compatibility

This release supports Python 3.8, 3.9, 3.10, 3.11, and 3.12.

pip, buildout, setuptools

In Plone core we use these versions to install Plone:

pip==23.3.2
setuptools==69.0.3
wheel==0.42.0
zc.buildout==3.0.1

In general you are free to use whatever versions work for you, but these worked for us.

Installation

For installation instructions, see the documentation.
Note that the Docker image for the backend is not ready yet.

Issues

If you find any issues, please report them in the main issue tracker.