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What does Vaadin 7 End of Life mean for your app?

By  
Marcus Hellberg
Marcus Hellberg
·
On Mar 29, 2019 8:35:00 AM
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In Product

Last week, we released Vaadin 7.7.17, the last public release of Vaadin 7.x. This means that 6 years and 1 month after the initial Vaadin 7, it has reached its end of life (EOL).

What does EOL mean for your Vaadin 7 app?

EOL for Vaadin 7 means that we will no longer supply any updates to the framework to the public. This includes updates for issues like:

  • Security vulnerabilities
  • Browser incompatibility issues
  • Java (JVM) version incompatibility issues

What are your options if you are still on Vaadin 7?

Fortunately, you have several options for extending the support or migrating to a more recent version. In order of increasing work effort, they are:

Option 1: Extended support through the Enterprise tier

If you are in a project where you're unable to migrate to a later version of Vaadin right now, you can buy extended support through the Enterprise subscription. This option allows you to get support for up to 10 additional years, until 2029.

Option 2: Migrate to Vaadin 8

While Vaadin 8 included some breaking API changes over Vaadin 7, it also shipped with a compatibility API that allows you to upgrade a Vaadin 7 app to Vaadin 8 with minimal effort. Vaadin 8 will receive free public updates until 2022.

Option 3: Move to Vaadin 13 with Multiplatform Runtime

The jump from Vaadin 7 to the more recent Vaadin versions is bigger. To help users handle the migration in steps, we have released a tool called Multiplatform Runtime (MPR).

The MPR tool lets you run your Vaadin 7 application in a compatibility mode inside of a Vaadin 10+ application so you can perform the migration task in smaller steps. The MPR tool is part of both Prime and Enterprise level subscriptions.

Option 4: Fork Vaadin and maintain it yourself

Vaadin is an Apache 2.0 licensed open source project, which means that you could also take on the maintenance work yourself by forking the project and creating your own custom builds. You can find the source code on GitHub.

Unsure what to do? We can help you figure it out.

We can help you if you are unsure of what option is most suitable for your project or you don't have the time or resources to assess the situation.

The Vaadin Migration Assessment service will give you a detailed assessment of your options for migration along with estimates for the effort.

For more options and information about migration, reach out to us and we'll be happy to help you!

Marcus Hellberg
Marcus Hellberg
Marcus is the VP of Developer Relations at Vaadin. His daily work includes everything from writing blogs and tech demos to attending events and giving presentations on all things Vaadin and web-related. You can reach out to him on Twitter @marcushellberg.
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