v26.0.00

Welcome to Gibbon v26.0.00 (Joss House Bay). This version featured an extended development cycle that focused on maintenance, stability and security. During this release cycle we worked with a number of security researchers to scan and test Gibbon, as explained in our v25.0.01 release notes.

In order to better fit with the school year we have updated our release cycle dates: going forward these will switch from January/June 20th to April/November 20th.

Over the past few years we have been working with lawyers, accountants and advisors to set up the Gibbon Foundation, a non-profit entity incorporated in Hong Kong. The foundation aims to protect and strengthen the project, and we are delighted to announce that it is now up and running. This opens the possibility for fundraising and donations to further support the development of Gibbon as a sustainable, global project. More news on this front will be shared in the coming months.

We are also pleased to announce that the copyright of the Gibbon codebase has been officially transferred from Ross Parker, the founder of Gibbon, to the Gibbon Foundation. This change represents a milestone in the growth and sustainability of the project and its community.

Gibbon v26 raises minimum requirements to PHP 7.4 and MySQL 5.7, enabling us to continue to modernize the codebase and use functionality from newer versions of these languages. Please check your system compatibility before upgrading. As PHP 8.2+ introduces several new deprecations and strict type checking requirements, testing for this version is ongoing. If you’re running Gibbon on PHP 8.2+, it’s recommended to turn off deprecation messages through php.ini, as these messages are only intended for development purposes.

A heartfelt thank you to everyone who continues to work hard to translate Gibbon into their own language. Thanks to your ongoing efforts Gibbon is available in 24 languages! If you would like to volunteer to translate Gibbon into your language, please email support@gibbonedu.org.

Important Notes for v26.0.00

• As of v26, Gibbon now requires a minimum PHP version of 7.4 and MySQL version of 5.7. Please check to ensure your server supports this requirement before upgrading. Gibbon v26 supports up to PHP 8.2 and MySQL 8.0, which are the highest recommended versions.
• Always backup your files and database before upgrading.
• If you are upgrading, please read the Changes With Important Notices section of CHANGELOG.txt before you install, to see if your upgrade requires any manual intervention.
• See the Updating Gibbon guide for detailed steps.

Developer Notes

• Our Gibbon Development Road Map includes our GitHub branch, project board for v27 and future release dates. Take a look at https://docs.gibbonedu.org/developers/getting-started/gibbon-road-map.