Sitefinity MVC (Feather) Source Code Repo Update

With the evolving of the Sitefinity codebase, and in particular Feather, all of our internal processes are becoming more and more complex. The thing that brings the most complexity to the release cycle is the storage of the codebase (the core part and Feather) in different source controls - TFS and GitHub. We decided to take action on this and improve the current process, so that we can use our increased velocity to deliver more stable features and more bug fixes.

Long story short, the Feather projects hosted on GitHub will be no longer our primary source for a build. It will be a mirror repo of Feather’s implementation without having control over it.

… And What Is the Small Print?

There are no major changes that will affect your daily work. The source code will be on GitHub and you will be able to browse, build and modify it locally. The first small change is that each major release and internal build of Sitefinity will be mapped to a particular version of Feather and will have the same version number. Until now, we used the following naming structure:

From now on, it will be more standardized:

After every service pack or major release the latest internal branch will be pushed to the master. If you want to test a specific fix from the Feather’s internal build you should use the corresponding version of Sitefinity internal build or vice versa.

The next change regards how you contribute to the projects. Since the GitHub repo is only a mirror the pull requests will not be approved because they will not change the codebase. However, you still have a support channel through the feedback portal to submit and track your suggested fixes, ideas and custom implementations. Please continue to contribute there with your feedback and requests.

When Does the New Versioning Start?

The process starts from version 10.0.6403.0, which is an internal build. Here is what it looks like in GitHub.

How Can You Work with the Source Code?

If you want to build a custom version of Feather please download the specific version that you want to modify, along with the corresponding Sitefinity version. Remove all of the references that you want to change and keep and reference Telerik.Sitefinity.FrontEnd project to all Feather widgets. For more details, follow the guidelines from this blog post.

Open Source Benefits at Higher Velocity

With the above change we’ll be able to keep the benefits of the open source part of Sitefinity, and with the increased velocity our team will deliver even more and better features and fixes for you.