I believe, the readers of this article are
well versed or educated of Angular basics and also have hands-on experience.
There have several versions of Angular been
already released including (BETA, Release Candidate, and Final version). If you
are more interested to read about the previous versions of Angular, I would
recommend the following official links:
Please note: Google intentionally has not
chosen the next version as “Angular 3” instead it will be “Angular
4” which is supposed to be launch its final version in March 2017. Angular
is getting more mature with its new versions.
Angular 4 release candidate 2 (rc.2) version
has also released. Here is the screenshot of the changes in the latest release
candidate (rc.2) of Angular 4:
Angular
Release Almanac
Google has a tentative plan to release
Angular 4 in the month of March 2017.
According to Igor Minar, Angular plans to have major releases
every 6 months with minimal breaking changes. This seems like a pretty feasible
plan, unless another mistake is done with the naming of the packages like it
happened for the router package. He quotes “Let's not call it AngularJS,
let's not call it Angular 2," he said, "because as we are releasing
more and more of these versions. It's going to be super confusing for
everybody.”
The Angular
team announced that they will be using SEMVER when releasing updates.
SEMVER
SEMVER is
abbreviation of Semantic Versioning. It is all about to make
meaningful version number of releases. You may look at the following table for
better understanding:
Angular team
has strategically aligned each semantic with tentative timeline. For instance:
1.
Patch: this version to be released every week exception of holidays.
2.
Minor: this version to be released every month.
3.
Major: this version to be released every six months meaning two
releases every year.
You know
switching from Angular 1.x to Angular 2.0 was a big-bang release. The concepts
were dramatically changed but fortunately the next version 4.0.0 will be a
smooth shift and a major version that will be backwards compatible with the previous release (version 2.x.x) for
most developers, but might remove APIs that have been deprecated two major
versions ago (6 or more months ago).
Starting with
the 2.0.0 release of Angular, Angular team adopted the following development
processes:
·
Moved to time-based release
cycles so that you can plan ahead.
·
A deprecation policy so that
you know how to get notified of API changes ahead of time.
·
Clarified the distinction
between stable and experimental APIs.
·
Clarified the scope of Public
API surface.
There would
be certainly feature enhancements in version 4.0.0 which we can discuss here.
Upcoming Features
·
Backward compatibility (mentioned
above as well)
·
Much smarter Angular compiler
(ngc) for better error handling
·
Extra type safety
·
Better runtime speed and parse
time and rest will come shortly
Tentative schedule after
4.0.0 final release in March 2017
Date
|
Stable Release
|
Compatibility*
|
September/October 2017
|
5.0.0
|
^4.0.0
|
March 2018
|
6.0.0
|
^5.0.0
|
September/October 2018
|
7.0.0
|
^6.0.0
|
I come up
with more information as I’ll get it. Till than… Happy reading…
Abhishek
Maitrey
twitter:
@abhimaitrey
