migrate from sencha extjs 5.1 to extjs 6

Question

A customer wants to migrate/port a existing extjs 5 application to extjs 6. He has a custom theme and all his classes are organized in packages (except application workspace).

What is your experience with that task? Is it a task which can be done in just a few hours or what should i check before?

I am aware of the fact that it depends on the size of the application but everything is well structured and i am not worried at that point.

• What are the things to keep in mind when porting?
• Is there a upgrade guide how to change a normal theme package to a fashion compatible theme?
• Is there something special about the build process?
• What else needs to be verified before?
• Would you do it over the sencha cmd? Or wouldn't you recommend it?
• What has changed in the build process? Do i need to fully reconfigure it?
• Right now its a "classic" app. Where should i put my existing classes? classic/modern folder?
• Do i need to create a "responsive" app?

I would be happy to get some feedback from the rare extjs dev out there and start that task well prepared and without upgrade pain :D

Thanks in advance for your support.

Answer 1

ExtJS 5 to 6 was reasonably straightforward - there's a lot of enhancements, but no fundamental changes (certainly compared with ExtJS 4 to 5).

Themes, in particular, worked unchanged, at least for me.

As a first step in the process, I would recommend upgrading your Sencha CMD to the latest, leaving the ExtJS version untouched. This should be fairly painless. Then, upgrade the ExtJS version and see how it goes.

FWIW, here's how I upgraded from ExtJS 6 to ExtJS 6.2 - the process should be similar.