Release date : 22/December/2020

Theme: Upgrading our Tech Stack

Note: This platform release requires at least a minimum of Java/OpenJDK 1.8 and MySQL 5.6 to run properly.

What's New?

This release is OpenMRS Platform 2.4.0 and is a major release version of the OpenMRS API that follows 2.3.2. It contains many under-the-hood updates to have a more modern tech stack. A number of libraries have been upgraded in this release and new features have been added such as support for OpenMRS to run on PostgreSQL, replacing the original FHIR module with the new and improved FHIR2 module which includes support for FHIR R4, upgrading other libraries e.g Log4j 2, JUnit 5, etc, switching domains from hibernate xml mappings to annotations, upgrading of the major core libraries like spring, hibernate and liquibase, adding support for MySQL 5.6 - 8.0, plus Java 8 - 15 support.

Release Manager: @CLIFF GITA, with mentorship from @Kaweesi Joseph and @Nathan Ruhanga, and support from @Herbert Yiga

Feature	Description	Status	Point of Contact

Feature	Description	Status	Point of Contact
Upgrade FHIR	Replace original fhir module with the FHIR2 module, which includes support for FHIR R4	done	@Ian Bacher
Upgrade Spring	Upgrade to Spring 5.2.9	done	@Daniel Kayiwa
Upgrade Hibernate	Upgrade to Hibernate 5.4.21	done	@Daniel Kayiwa
Support Java 8 - 15	Add support for Java 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 while not losing support for Java 8	done	@Daniel Kayiwa
Upgrade Liquibase	Upgrade to Liquibase 3.10.2 and Avoid running legacy liquibase changesets. This greatly improves the startup speed by approximately 50%	Done	@Wolf Schlegel
Upgrade Other Libraries	Upgrade a number of other underlying libraries. e.g Log4j 2, JUnit 5, etc	Done	@Pahonsi Bebeto Achile
Support PostgreSQL	Add support for PostgreSQL versions 8.2 up to the latest 12	Done	@Aman Mishra
Support MySQL 5.6 - 8.0	Add support for all MySQL versions from 5.6 to the latest 8.0	Done	@Daniel Kayiwa
Improvements to Condition and bug-fixes around Orders	Substantial improvements to Condition (were also included in 2.3.2), including: Linking a Condition to an Encounter and Making Conditions Form Recordable (obs). Ongoing discussion for other improvements needed is here on Talk.	Done	@CLIFF GITA

Library upgrades