Release of Platform and Studio 7.0

Announcements
#1

Hi everyone,

The long-awaited major release 7 of the CUBA Platform is finally out!

It is available in our artifact repositories and can be used for the existing and new applications if you install the new version of CUBA Studio. This is the most exciting part of the new release: all functionality of the Studio has been implemented in the IntelliJ IDEA plugin, so you now have a single tool to work with and don’t need to switch between Studio and the IDE.

cuba-splash

You can install the new Studio as a standalone IDE, which is actually IntelliJ IDEA CE 2018.3 bundled with the CUBA Studio plugin, or as a plugin for your existing IntelliJ IDEA. Both variants are listed on our website download page. We recommend using the standalone IDE (called Studio Application on the website) if you don’t have IntelliJ IDEA 2018.3 on your computer or if you want to test the new version without making any changes in your current development environment. The new plugin completely replaces the old CUBA plugin, however it contains all its functions including the ability to integrate with the old separate Studio 6.x, so you can work with both new and old Studio simultaneously if you want.

The new Studio has some “premium” features which are available only if you have a subscription. These are graphical designers of entity, view, screen layout and theme variables. The “10 entities maximum” limitation has gone, so you can work with projects of any size even with the free version of Studio.

If you already have a subscription for the old Studio installed on the computer, the new Studio will use it automatically. If not, as soon as you open a CUBA project for the first time, the new Studio will request a trial subscription online and show you a message about it. You can just accept the trial subscription and enjoy the full power of the Studio. The trial doesn’t imply any obligations on you, so don’t worry and explore all the features provided by the tool. As we consider the new Studio not mature enough, we now offer an extended trial period - it will last till 2019-06-01.

There is one more change in the distribution policy: the BPM, Charts, FTS, Reports and BI premium add-ons are free and open-source since version 7.0. They are available in the main artifact repositories, the source code projects are on GitHub. You don’t need a subscription to use them in projects based on the framework version 7.0+.

The new Studio is able to work with projects based on the framework version 6.10 and 7.0. See the Opening a project based on CUBA 6.10 for the first time section of the Opening an Existing Project documentation page for the instructions on how to setup your environment if you have a CUBA 6.10 project with premium add-ons. Pay attention to the fact that the new Studio does not pass repository credentials to Gradle, so you have to provide them through the ~/.gradle/gradle.properties file.

The new CLI for working with the framework 7.0 can be downloaded from Bintray or installed via SDK MAN / Homebrew.

As usual, the full list of changes with the links to the updated documentation is in the release notes. Please read it carefully before migrating to the new version.

Happy coding with the new framework, Studio and CLI!

18 Likes
#2
#3

I see you did a lot of work in new versions and I like to see premium add-ons becoming free, but my first impression is that Studio 7 looks like a downgrade and not an upgrade. Initial screens and UI looks less polished and less user friendly: context help from old version is missing, 6.10’s toolbar and accordions on the left side were easier to use (with most used shortcuts at the bottom of accordion like “Generate DB scripts” and “Generate model”) and I can’t find Entity Designer or Screen Designer even after I’ve accepted to use trial subscription for “premium” features…

3 Likes
#4

Mmm.

I’ve had a lot of trouble with this new studio since the beta started, and it’s still giving me a lot of trouble.

I also agree with @easyviber4456; I’m not sure this actually faster than working with old Cuba Studio and IntelliJ as separate apps. Cuba 7 seems to take a long time to switch between screens, and xml files, that didn’t give me any problems with the old Studio, seem to be causing some odd behaviour in the new one.

Case in point: when I’m looking at a datasource in a screen, I cannot quickly switch to the underlying dataview to fix it; I have to find the xml file, find the view I’m looking for, and then edit it. That actually takes longer than it does under Cuba 6. I find navigating around it just seems to take longer. And some of the fonts are really tiny.

Stop server.
Undeploy
Clean
Rebuild
Redeploy … and I’m still running old code. Fixed the problem by opening up the deployment folder and deleting the tomcat directory. Rebuild again, and we’re good to go.

I think I might have said this before, but I wonder if it might have been better to upgrade the platform and the studio separately. It would have been nice to use the new features of the API (which are great, by the way), and keep the old Studio. I think the new Studio needs to cook a little longer.

2 Likes
#5

I’m giving it a shot, but the new studio seems less intuitive and forgiving than the old.
For example on the designer screen, there used to be “apply” and “save” this was great incase you accidently removed or changed a UI element. The new studio doesn’t seem to have that design pattern. I tested it by removing a container full of components and checked to see if I could “undo” it. Under the edit menu I could not.

It does seem to perform much slower as well.
There just seems to by a lot more clicks to get things done than in the previous version.
I do miss the contextual help, accordion menu structure, not having everything buried in layers of right click menus, etc.

This is a good example of what I mean by difficult to navigate.

image

This doesn’t work, I just get a message I need to buy the Ultimate Edition to edit it.

this task is straightforward in the previous release:

image

I’m sure I just need some more time with it.
Currently looking for where I go to zip a project or build a war file.

3 Likes
#6

Thank you guys for the feedback, we really need it to improve the product.
Let me address some of your concerns. If I miss something doesn’t mean we are going to ignore it, everything will be considered.

First of all, you can easily make your own toolbar with any actions from the CUBA main menu. Click View > Toolbar, then right-click on the empty space of the toolbar and select “Customize Menus and Toolbars”. Expand “Main Toolbar” and add actions from the CUBA main menu. We’ll probably make some default CUBA toolbar with the most used actions in a future update.
Also, do you really think the “Generate model” action is frequently used?

They are in the separate tabs of the entity source code and screen XML:
image

See also https://doc.cuba-platform.com/studio/data_model_entities.html and https://doc.cuba-platform.com/studio/screen_descriptor.html

Yes, because it involves running embedded browser processes. But now you can have multiple screens open simultaneously… Also, what is your hardware?

This is a valid point, you cannot switch to the view directly from screen designer. This is because the designer runs in embedded browser, while the view editor is written in IntelliJ UI. It will be possible when we rewrite the designer panels in the IntelliJ UI too - we have such plan.

But even now you can open the view much faster - just switch to XML and Ctrl(Cmd)+click on the view name. You will navigate to the view XML definition and be able to switch to Structure tab if needed.

What fonts do you mean? What is your screen resolution and scaling factor?
Also, you can adjust the canvas zoom using the context menu (Ctrl+click on the top of the canvas):
image

Was it a change in a screen? How do you start the server, using CUBA Application run configuration or via Start App Server menu command? Anyway, hot deploy should work as before and we are keen to fix it we reproduce the problem.

As I said before, all menu commands can be put on a toolbar. Would be great to see your suggestions on what actions should be on the future default “CUBA toolbar” and how to restructure the main menu for faster access.
Also, the most commands are available through the context menu of the project tree elements.

Probably you see the following editor when execute the “Edit Theme Variables” command:
2019-01-29%2022-34-30%20theme%20vars

Just ignore the message on the top (click “Do not suggest Ultimate Edition”) and switch to the Theme Variables tab which you can see on the bottom:
image

Open Terminal (tool window at bottom) and launch Gradle tasks:

gradlew zipProject
gradlew buildWar

Alternatively, use the Gradle tool window:
image

5 Likes
#7

Thanks for the tips. Like I said, I just need more time with it.
I do appreciate all the hard work that went into this.

2 Likes
#8

That’s sort of my point: we have this wonderful new framework, but the new Studio could do with more work, I feel. It would have been great (for me at least) to be able to use the framework and hold off on the Studio until I can use it. Right now, I have to roll back to Version 6.0 (losing the new composition stuff) because I can only edit the view.xml file safely in Studio 6.

I’m running it on MacBook Pro (2017 model I think), which was fast enough when I was using Cuba Studio 6 and IntelliJ separately.

It was a change to the screen, yes. I removed a column from a table because I couldn’t get the view.xml file changes to stick. The screen looked the same after a couple of rebuilds and restarts, so I deleted the deploy directory, and that fixed it.

#9

I congratulate the whole team for the effort, they did a great job. All change has at first a lot of resistance, but as we get to know a little more we realize the multiple advantages. I love the tool it facilitates my daily work.

Nelson F.

5 Likes
#10

Thank you Nelson!

We are now putting a lot of efforts into the new Studio, so it should become better in time. We are going to release new features and improvements more frequently than before, approximately once a month. So the plugin version 8 will be released by the end of February. Critical updates will be released when needed between feature releases.

About the slowness of the graphical designers using embedded browsers: we are working on it. In the short term, we are going to get rid of unneeded refresh, later we will rewrite them completely to IntelliJ UI. Only the canvas of the screen layout designer will remain web-based.

Please create topics in the Support or Ideas categories with the studio-7 tag if you have questions or problems with the new Studio.

2 Likes
#11

A post was split to a new topic: Feedback on the new Studio

#12

Great work…

#13

image

Very minor issue but it says Hoy deploy now instead of Hot deploy :smile:.

Next to that I can’t seem to get a filter on a datagrid working with the new datacontainers. In 6.10 you only had to link the filter to the related datasource but this does not work for datacontainers. I set the dataContainer property of the filter using the designer, and it inputs this in XML as seen below, but the code validation says that dataContainer attribute does not belong there.

image

Next to that I am really enjoying this new studio. Keep up the great work!

1 Like
#14

Hi @timmothyquist
Thank you for the report!

In the filter, you should specify dataLoader attribute, as the filter affects loading of data. Studio designer writes wrong attribute due to the bug.

Your message was just in time, we are going to build an update so the bugs will be fixed soon.

#15
#16

Is the available version ready for migration and production use?

#17

Of course you can use it for all your projects. We want to invite more people to review the commercial features and give us feedback. New feature releases will be built approximately once a month.

#18

Hi CUBA team
Since you’re working on to release new features in V7, i want to link you to couple of threads on BPM here on features request in BPM and here. Thanks for any update.

#19

Studio update 7.2 is available.
Please read the documentation for how to update. The list of resolved issues is here.

Regards,
Konstantin

1 Like
#20

Great! I shall try it…