We knew this was a long time coming, and it’s finally here. The Angular Team has announced that they will soon release AngularJS 1.7.0, which will be the last minor release.
What will happen now?
Regular development of 1.7 will continue, meaning we can expect 1.7.1, 1.7.2, etc. until June 30, 2018. All these releases will contain bug fixes and features that are not breaking changes.
What will happen next?
After June 30, AngularJS 1.7 will go into Long Term Support. This means that for 3 years the Angular team will support AngularJS and make changes to make sure it continues functioning. There will be no new features. Bug fixes will only be released in case a security flaw is found, or if a change to jQuery or a major browser breaks 1.7.
Why now?
Google say that in October 2017 the number of active Angular (that is, 2+) developers has surpassed that of AngularJS developers, which was their cue all along to when they can start wrapping up 1.x.
What should you do now?
If you’re still running 1.x, I highly recommend taking the time and moving to 1.6 (see my Modern AngularJS Migration Guide).
1.7 will be released soon, but it will also remove lots of deprecated APIs, meaning you can expect to need to change older code and update older dependencies.
And then what?
Hmm. That’s a tough one. I’ll be talking about it some more in the upcoming future, so make sure the sign up below!
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