Backpack v5 is here! And it's open-core.

For the past 8 months we've been working on a new version and now... we've finally launched it. We call it 🥁🥁🥁... Backpack v5. But f...

Cristian Tabacitu

Published on 11 February 2022 in News

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For the past 8 months we've been working on a new version and now... we've finally launched it. We call it 🥁🥁🥁... Backpack v5.

But first... we've heard you... and we've learned our lesson from the 4.0 upgrade too... no more difficult upgrade processes. That's why, even though this is called v5, you can expect a pretty quick upgrade process... somewhere between 10-20 min for most projects. Just follow our upgrade guide.

And we have even better news. If you purchased Backpack v4 in the past 12 months, Backpack v5 is a FREE upgrade. You can read more about our switch to open-core to understand why. If you qualify (have purchased a v4 license after 9th Feb 2021), go to your Licenses page - you'll see a notice telling you to claim your v5 license, for free. Just click the "Claim" button.

Let's move on to the exciting stuff... What's new? Depending on the complexity of your admin panel, here's what will be interesting to you in Backpack v5:

• small-complexity admin panels can now we created FOR FREE, because the basic Backpack features are now free & open-source; no application form, no nothing - just install and use it, it's MIT-licensed, like Laravel itself; see the feature comparison table (FREE vs PRO); we are super-proud that we've been able to do this; Backpack was free at launch in 2016... and 6 years later... it has a free version again 🎉
• medium-complexity admin panels... we've added quite a few of quality-of-life improvements, like:
  • error modal to easily debug AJAX errors;
  • validation rules directly on fields;
  • validation rules in an array instead of FormRequest;
  • model events, to not have to override operation functions any more;
  • the changes we've made to our core & licensing will allow us to keep adding more features, in v5.1, v5.2, v5.3 etc.; from now on, we expect to add a new feature to backpack/pro every 3-4 weeks 😱 and we have a roadmap that's clearer than ever, thanks to your votes in this discussion; we're so excited for this year!
• high-complexity admin panels... we've spent over 6 extra months on this release, to make your life easier, in the more common complex use cases:
  • out-of-the-box, the subfields feature inside the relationship field will allow you to create sub-entries right inside your Create/Update form... and change attributes on the pivot table; for every Eloquent relationship type, we have the most common 1-2 use cases covered; this alone will save you dozens of hours; This. Is. HUGE!
  • it is now dead-simple to validate the repeatable field;
  • we've added simple ways to code your own front-end logic (see the new script and style widgets);

Of course, there are a lot of other improvements we've made, that we won't mention here. In total, between June 2021 and Feb 2022, we've made 64 PRs to Backpack v5, some of them HUGE.

Most of the time we spent working on v5 was to make it a lot faster to use in complex use cases. In order to achieve that, we've had to re-write some of our most complex features (the repeatable and relationship fields, not to mention the Create & Update saving process). This was a lot more difficult and time-consuming than we expected. But... not only is it done:

• we've done it in a way that is almost 100% backwards-compatible;
• the code we touched is now cleaner and easier to maintain than ever;

Big big thanks to @pxpm (Pedro Martins)... he's been a real hero in this process, working for 6+ months on this rewrite.

In 2022, our focus will be on adding more small&medium features and more quality-of-live improvements. We're using Backpack every day too, so we want our experience as developers to be even better than now. We want to make it fun to build admin panels.

We're very excited about this new version... and about the open-core split! We hope you are too. This version will help us spend even more time on Backpack maintenance, bug fixing and features. And we think you'll see the results soon enough... we have big plans for the future.

I you want to read more about this:

• see the v5 release notes for more info on new features & the open-core split;
• see the FAQs on our pricing page for pricing corner cases;
• open the PetShop Admin example in our demo to see new subfields feature in action;
• open the Monster Admin in our demo to easily understand which fields are now FREE and which are PRO;

Thank you for using Backpack. We love doing this for you.

Cheers!