Right, after a truly massive amount of communication/discussion/argument between myself, jl777, Damelon, Jean-Luc, Riker(formerly Lyaffe) and Chanc3r....the core devs and Nxt Foundation have arrived at a proposal package to allow Nxt, SuperNET and the wider Nxt-based eco-system to move forward from here.
We will be publishing the Slack logs for the entire discussion, so that everyone can see exactly how this proposal was created.
At this moment, it appears that the issues caused by the API change are under control and documented, and that most projects have adjusted to the changes. Good work, guys and girls.
Jean-Luc would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused to the Nxt/SuperNET community by this issue,
I'd like to quickly explain how this happened, afaik:
The API change was documented in the changelogs for the 1.6 branch, but the full consequences of the change for the API chain were not. Some people figured this out on their own, but some didn't. As the 'old' API calls were still active in the 1.6e test versions, the 'bug' did not appear for some project operators until the production version 1.6.2 went live.
This is a clear failure of the testing/review process for new Nxt releases, and we need to make some changes. Everyone involved wants to make sure that this sort of issue does not happen again in the future, and that no Nxt-based project is ever broken by an update of Nxt MainNet.
SuperNET was probably the most affected by this issue, so I've spent some time to get feedback from jl777 on how he would like to move forward, and the core devs will be meeting most of his requests, but not all.
So here are the main points:
The API will not be rolled back in a 1.6.3 release to the old 1.5.15 standard. The issues with 1.6.2 have been researched, understood and fixes have been implemented by most projects. (ordinary desktop users are NOT affected, just to remind everyone). The 1.6 API changes are vital to allow Nxt to move to the 1.7 branch, and will have to be implemented in any case. But: J-L has assured me that these are the last API changes needed for 1.7, which will have a release date around the end of this year. There will be one small API change in 1.7, to do with the AssetDelete function, but there will be no other API changes, Nxt will therefore have have a stable API for at least the next 3-6 months, probably longer.
In order to ensure that there is a clear line of communication between Nxt core devs and external projects, we have set up an old-fashioned mailing list to allow a direct means of reporting bugs/requesting support/giving feedback from/to the core devs. This will be a massive improvement on the current forum-based communication, and will only be open to serious devs and project managers. If you are one of those, contact Damelon or VanBreuk for more details.
Chanc3r has volunteered to lead on giving SuperNET support to help with any further issues that they may have, and the core devs are committed to helping everyone out with a smooth transition to 1.6.2.
The review/testing process for major releases will be changed. Bugfix/zeroday/patch releases will not be affected, but anything with an API change or a major new feature will have a compulsory review period of 2-4 weeks after release as an experimental version. In that time, the devs on the mailing list will examine and test the code to ensure that it functions in their production environment. (I'd like to see more use of TestNet here, btw.)
Once the new release has been checked out, the external devs will be asked to sign off and confirm that the new code is good for their purposes. This process will be purely about code testing and approval, not about feature requests.
On the feature request/planning side: J-L and Riker will be opening a seperate discussion about features (and particularly fee structures) for the upcoming 1.7 branch in the next couple of days.