Notification of minimum version change - 2.4.5.0 - September 2023

At time of writing, the current minimum version of AMP that will start up is version 2.3.0.0. Versions older than this will refuse to start unless upgraded. We plan to change this later this year to move this up in line with changes to our release system.

In September 2023, along with the existing announcement that we’re ending support for older operating systems - the minimum AMP version will also be changed to be version 2.4.5.0.

The keen eyed among you may have noticed that 2.4.5.0 has not yet been released. It is due to be released later this month in June, so there will be an approximately 3 month delay after this update is released before it becomes mandatory.

This will be the third time since AMPs release that we’re increasing the minimum version.

Why are we making this change?

Normally we increase the minimum version for one of three reasons:

  • Security updates that are important enough that everyone needs to have them.
  • Changes to the licencing system that mean previous versions would no longer be able to activate.
  • Changes to the update system that mean previous versions would no longer be able to update themselves.

In this occasion, it’s the latter reason. We also announced recently the changes we’re making to the release process to make AMP more manageable and updates more reliable for everyone.

Part of the change means an entirely new release manifest that is generated automatically by the build system. Since old versions of AMP don’t know how to use this new manifest, they won’t know how to use it.

Anyone on AMP 2.4.4.0 who updates to 2.4.5.0 won’t notice anything unusual at all. We’ll be maintaining both release systems in parallel for a short while so people can do direct upgrades.

After September, we will keep the old build manifest online for a few more months - but it won’t keep being updated. This means that anyone who tries to update AMP from a pre-2.4.5.0 version will have to do so twice. Once to get to the last published version as of September, and then a second time to get the actual latest version under the new release system.

What happens to existing instances?

After the minimum version is increased, any stopped instances older than this version will refuse to start until they are updated.

Instances that are running will shut themselves down and attempt to update themselves and start back up. But this also relies on the instance manager tools being up-to-date. If the tools are also out of date, then they’ll shut down.

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