Release of MMBase 1.9.7

[mihxil]

Hello all,

I guess it is a bit untimely, but we are about the release a MMBase 1.9.7. Only 14 years after 1.9.6. 

It's kind of an hobby too actually, but there is indeed  a customer that requested to upgrade a still running MMBase application. 

It required some work, but most stuff is working again. Highlights:

- The MMBase server itself was the subversion repository But the server has gone.

  The versioning repository is now github: https://github.com/mmbase/mmbase/

  The default branch is 'MMBase-1_9'. We neglected the main branch, which contains the work for 'mmbase 2.0', which IIRC was mainly targeted at splitting up stuff. I doubt if we ever come around to that now.

- The MMBase server which was also the maven repository. Artifacts are now published to maven central: https://central.sonatype.com/search?q=g%3Aorg.mmbase. The latest version is not '1.9.7 rc3'.

- MMBase 1.9.6 was built with java 5. This is not feasible any more. 1.9.7 will be built with java 8, and this is the minimal requirement now. We actually run it fine on java 25 though.

- We supply docker images for building and running.  https://github.com/orgs/mmbase/packages?ecosystem=container

 The said customer actually requested the whole thing to run in docker.

- The MMBase server was also providing (nightly) builds. This is now done on github actions

- The MMBase site  (https://www.mmbase.org) itself sadly got lost entirely. A static placeholder is now served via github pages.

- The documentation in the admin pages didn't render any more, mostly because the used xslt were pulled from the oasis server which nowadays gives 'too many request' on that. 

- A new cache implementation was added based on caffeine. 

A complete list can be found here: https://github.com/mmbase/mmbase/issues?q=is%3Aissue%20state%3Aclosed%20milestone%3A1.9.7

greetings, 

 Michiel