I'm new and about to start a long-term project, should I use CI 1.x?

[eluser]Citizen[/eluser]
Hello all,

I just got done watching the tutorial videos and was going to do my next major project using CodeIgniter. When I was doing the step by step in the user guide, I noticed that CI uses PHP4 exclusively.

Ouch.

So, I did some more research.

CI has its 2.0 coming out. Zend has 2.0 coming out. CakePHP has 2.0 coming out.

Is it just me or is right now just a bad time to start a new long-term project? I'm afraid to commit to anything and then have it be a bad decision 6 months from now.

[eluser]Kindari[/eluser]
CI does not use php4 Exclusively. You can run it on php5. It is Compatible with php4 and as such does NOT take advantage of some php5 only features.

CI2 is not officially released but is stable. Furthermore CI Reactor is being developed to handle bug fixes and everything.

I am myself developing a long term project on CI reactor. I expect the project to take at least 6 months to develop the initial feature set, with long term support following. Reactor has been very stable for me, and is in my opinion surpassed CI 1.7.3 by far in usability, especially with its proper support for GET variables.

The Reactor Team is very careful not to introduce bugs into reactor, But if you are worried about that you can Only use CI2 core, which only the best of commits to reactor get pushed to the core. The core should be extremely stable to develop on.

To sum up, Give CodeIgniter a shot, I don't think you'll be disappointed.

[eluser]Citizen[/eluser]
Thanks

I am myself developing a long term project on CI reactor

Is "CI reactor" different than CI? And reading your post I am still somewhat confused. Was your verdict CI2 or CI1?

[eluser]smilie[/eluser]
If you set your project right from the beginning - it should be not a problem to migrate to 2.0 later on. Just take in account what the changes are / will be and create code not to use functions for which you already know that will become obsolete.

Cheers,
Smilie

[eluser]smilie[/eluser]
@Citizen: core reactor is a faster developing version of CI. It will have faster updates, but will therefore be more unstable then 'normal' version. If you can live with that - go with it.

In regard to CI2 -> CI1 - see above

Cheers,
Smilie

[eluser]Kindari[/eluser]
Sorry

My verdict is CI2.

In CI2 there are two development branches, The "core" branch is basicly only proven code allowed. It is located here:

https://bitbucket.org/ellislab/codeigniter

The Reactor branch is a sort of testing grounds for new ideas and development. Also for people who live on the edge and wish to test new features. It takes its suggestions from uservoice and discusses the merits of the idea prior to implementation. It will have newer features and more features faster then the core, but there are obviously problems associated with that. While no one will intentionally introduce a bug into the reactor source code, bugs are more likely to occur in reactor then in the CI2 core.

Reactor is located here:

https://bitbucket.org/ellislab/codeigniter-reactor

[eluser]Citizen[/eluser]
Thanks, I think I'll use CI2-core. What happens if I want to use future versions? Do I just upload and overwrite my old files?

[eluser]Kindari[/eluser]
Pretty much yes. Codeigniter does well not to override YOUR code. Need to upgrade from CI2.0 to CI2.1? Download 2.1 and copy the system directory over to your folder. The application directory is not replaced which is where all of your actual code is.

Then it is a simple matter of updating your code to be relevant to any changes made, so just read the changelog before upgrading.

[eluser]Citizen[/eluser]
Thanks guys, i'm off to go code