We have a 5 year old application written in vaadin 6. It only uses basic vaadin UI framework functions. If we want to upgrade to a newer vaadin version that will be supported, what is the version we should go to? I understand that moving from v6 to v7 and above requires some rework. Is vaadin 8 the best version to use to complete this UI migration? How long will vaadin 8 be supported? Are the UI framework stable after vaadin 8, i.e. upgrading to higher versions do not require changes in the application? Thanks for some guidance.
Vaadin versions are either incremental or come with long-term support.
A long-term support version is maintained as an open source product for 5 years after the initial release. Additionally, Vaadin is offering commercial support for another 10 years. An incremental version is only maintained for a short overlap after the next version.
The other side of the coin is how easy it is to update your existing project. Vaadin 7 and Vaadin 8 is roughly the same from that point of view since Vaadin 8 also includes an extensive compatibility package that covers basically everything from Vaadin 7.
The jump to from Vaadin 6 to either Vaadin 14 or Vaadin 23 is bigger than the jump to Vaadin 8, but there isn't a big difference between 14 and 23 when it comes to the work needed for migrating from 6.