Introducing "Continuous Ember Upgrades"

We just launched "Continuous Ember Upgrades," a service that lets you spend time building instead of upgrading.

What does that mean? When using Ember there are many dependencies to upgrade: Ember itself, Ember CLI, Ember Data, and all of the Ember addons you use.

For a fixed monthly price per application, we handle:

  • Upgrading all of the Ember-related dependencies to their latest stable versions
  • Making the necessary code changes to support these new versions
  • Removing or handling deprecations
  • Checking the app in your supported platforms and browsers
  • Providing your dev team with the information necessary to make use of newly available features and avoid deprecated syntax or patterns

Why did we create this service?

We've upgraded many Ember applications, and one common theme we've noticed is that it's quicker, easier, and less risky to upgrade an app as new versions of dependencies are released, rather than waiting and trying to do a "big bang" upgrade. Not every team can spare the time or resources to keep an app up-to-date, and that's where we come in.

Upgrading is important

Upgrades are inevitable, for a number of reasons, not least of which is that older versions of dependencies become unsupported and don’t get bug or security fixes, which can leave your app vulnerable. Ember's plan to support LTS releases solves some of this concern, but only for core-supported libraries. Beyond that, new versions often include performance improvements, making your app run faster and your user experience better.

Upgrading is important, not to be on the cutting edge, but to keep from falling behind the community. Many learning resources, addons, and support channels are mostly, if not entirely, manned by volunteers, who often only have enough bandwidth to apply themselves to the newest versions. Being able to use the latest addons is a huge advantage; they can save hours or days of development time. If you don't upgrade at all, eventually you will be left behind.

Upgrading regularly is more efficient

Given that you will have to upgrade, upgrading sooner rather than later makes economic sense. When you wait too long to upgrade, you'll spend more time and effort than if you'd been upgrading incrementally. When you upgrade continuously developers only need to learn a few weeks worth of new features and deprecations, rather than months (or years) worth. It also means fewer changes each time, which is easier to review and verify, and much less prone to error.

But, upgrades are often neglected

Upgrades, even if performed regularly, and even in the exceptional environment Ember has given us, take time and have risks. Unfortunately, this means that upgrading is often put off, even on the most diligent of teams. New features almost always take priority and it can be hard to take developer time away for an upgrade. In exchange for getting more features complete today, the team pays later when they finally do upgrade.

Enter "Continuous Ember Upgrades"

After observing all this, we thought, "How could this be better?", which led to our new offering. We will monitor for new versions of your application’s dependencies, like Ember, Ember Data, and your addons. When new versions are released, our experts do the work of updating your application and verifying that everything is OK. Once we’re done, we submit a pull request that you can merge when you’re ready, as well as a document with a summary of the changes, deprecations, and new features to brief your developers.

Continuous Ember Upgrades lets you get all the benefits of new Ember versions — new features, performance enhancements, and protection against obsolescence — without ever having to take time away from your business.

For more information, including pricing, check out ContinuousUpgrades.com.