Allow developers to support Joomla 3, 4 and 5 in one package

[stevejburge]

There might be a better place to put this. If there is, please let me know.

I'm excited to see the Joomla 5 roadmap. After reading through everything, I've one request ...

Most Joomla extension developers have spent the last 18 months or so on updating their extensions for Joomla 4. Many of us did this by releasing one package that supports both Joomla 3 and Joomla 4. We did this to speed up the process and make it easier for our customers to update.

I see this on the roadmap, which is great:
"Components that work in Joomla 4 should also work in Joomla 5, as long as they support PHP 8.1."

However, there is a nuance to add here.

For practical reasons, extension developers are not always building perfectly smooth Joomla 4 extensions. Hopefully Joomla 5 will still support Joomla 3-like extension structures and allow developers to support Joomla 3, 4, and 5 in one package.

Please remember this Joomla 3/Joomla 4 bridging when deprecating code for Joomla 5.

[stevejburge]

I see this post has been updated with a "Compatibility plugin":
https://www.joomla.org/announcements/release-news/5868-joomla-5-panta-rhei-the-follow-up.html

That sounds like it might be just the solution needed here. Thanks Joomla team!