The CodeIgniter blog has a a new update today with some changes that are happening in the project and it's community.

If you are following CICON 2011 today, then you no doubt already heard from the Reactor team: CodeIgniter is now using Git for source control, and has moved its home to GitHub. Also, CodeIgniter "Core" is not longer being publicly maintained. CodeIgniter "Reactor" is CodeIgniter, so we are dropping that suffix. In short: CodeIgniter is the framework, and Reactor is our community driven development program.

As a part of the move they also released a new version of the formerly-Reactor codebase. The EllisLab blog has more information about the git switch including their reasons and some of the immediate effects they see from the change.

If you've heard all about the CodeIgniter Reactor project (the community powered branch of the popular framework) and have wanted to get involved, now's the perfect time. Because of a change in the ranks, they're looking for another Engineer to fill an open spot.

If you follow the Reactor team, you probably already know that the venerable Ed Finkler had to resign from his position due to personal time constraints. That means that we have an opening, so if you feel that you qualify, please email iwanttohelp at codeigniter dot com.

The email needs to include your CodeIgniter username, a link to your profile, three contributions back to the framework and a paragraph stating why you think you should be the new Engineer.

The CodeIgniter Podcast has (finally) released the next episode of their series - episode #5 where two Reactor Engineers (John Crepezzi and Kenny Katzgaru) talk about the project and some interesting recent additions.

Reposted from oconf.org, Reactor Engineers John Crepezzi and Kenny Katzgrau talk about their plans for CodeIgniter Reactor and talk about the idea of "sparks".

The sparks are self-contained, easy to install packages that bring additional functionality to the CodeIgniter core set of tools. You can either download the episode to listen or you can use the in-page player on the CodeIgniter Podcast site.

If you've been looking for an open source project to get involved with and have thought about one of the many PHP frameworks out there as a viable option, you should take a look at Phil Sturgeon's guide to getting involved with CodeIgniter and some of the recent major changes the project's seen.

Now that CodeIgniter (Reactor) 2.0 is out people are starting to get involved, which is great. [...] what makes Reactor so much more different than CodeIgniter has been in the past? Well that is easy, anyone can be involved whether you are a hard-core developer who is happy to jump into the codebase and start changing things and adding features, or a new user who just wants to request some new features, you can do this on the UserVoice.

He talks about some of the things you can expect from the Engineers (the team heading up the development of the Reactor branch) and some of the things you can do with your code contribution to help it get accepted more readily.

Elliot Haughin has posted some of his thoughts about the huge amount of changes the CodeIgniter framework project has been going through lately including moves to Bitbucket, the "Core" versus "Reactor" branches and how he sees it all as "rather messy".

It was just a few months ago that the CodeIgniter community began to explode with a torrent of frustration that CodeIgniter simply wasn't progressing as a framework. There were also a few prominent developers considering abandoning the framework in favour of more active alternatives. [...] Before we go patting ourselves on the back, and heralding the reactor as a great success, there's a much wider question we need to look at: 'Are people actually upgrading?'.

He notes that, based on his experiences, people don't seem to be upgrading to this latest release and that several people still see Reactor as a "beta" and not a viable upgrade alternative. He suggests three things he think could help - a good upgrade guide, a stop of support in libraries for non-Reactor codebases and encouragement to use mercurial more (cloning the repo).

The day has finally arrived for the CodeIgniter fans out there - EllisLab has officially released CodeIgniter 2.0.0 in two versions - the Core and Reactor branches.

Today EllisLab and the CodeIgniter Reactor Engineers are proud to announce the first official release of CodeIgniter 2.0.0, which is being released in two flavors.

The "Core" version will be the branch that EllisLab uses for their internal applications and will be a bit slower moving. The "Reactor" branch, however, is more community-powered and headed up by a set of Engineers that will guide the framework and work to make it its best. Also mentioned as new in the post are the upcoming ability for users to contribute directly to the user guide, the creation of a standardized Authentication library and a more object-like model setup. If you're interested in the Reactor branch and want to try it out or contribute, head over to the bitbucket account for the project.

New on the CodeIgniter.com site there's an update on Reactor, the community branch of the framework talking about the mission statement of the team and formally introducing the members of the Reactor Engineers team.

2011 is still a week away, but EllisLab and the CodeIgniter Reactor team have been busy nonetheless, putting the previously announced plans into effect. Two weeks ago, the Reactor team and nearly everyone on EllisLab staff participated in a conference call that determined the goals and mechanics for the new community branch of CodeIgniter.

The members of the team are now:

• Eric Barnes
• John Crepezzi
• Ed Finkler
• Mark Huot
• Kenny Katzgrau
• Phil Sturgeon

Kenny Katzgrau has written up a post about some of the things going on with EllisLab, CodeIgniter and the CodeIgniter Reactor project from the perspective of one of the selected Engineers to head it up.

A couple of weeks ago, Derek Jones of EllisLabs announced that the CodeIgniter Core would officially be branched so a community-driven version of the framework could be created. This new branch will be called CodeIgniter Reactor. The plan, which was clarified today, is focused on allowing a select group of CI engineers to actively commit new features to the codebase, while taking feature requests via a uservoice forum. Over time, any proven, time-tested features in Reactor will be merged into the Core.

He touches on things like the Kohana framework, why he thinks the CodeIgniter community is still so strong, what he sees happening with the Reactor project and his own word to the skeptics.

Phil Sturgeon, one of those selected to a spot in the Engineer group of the CodeIgniter Reactor community branch, has posted a few thoughts of his own about the moves EllisLab has made and the reaction from the community he's seen.

Since what some have referred to as "CodeIgniter-gate" EllisLab's have done a great job of listening to the points raised by me and other members of the community and in part I believe we have effected change. [...] Good news right? Hell yes. This is exactly what the CodeIgniter community has been looking for. EllisLab need to keep their core version working for themselves of course and have always suggested that if a feature is to be integrated then it needs to be heavily tested first.

He follows this with a "but" in the form of a few common comments from the community - unfortunately negative. He also mentions the UserVoice forum where developers can suggest new features and hash out ones suggested by others. If you'd like to contribute code, you can still fork the main repository for now and push back with pull requests.

The CodeIgniter project (from EllisLab) has posted the latest community efforts they've been making to try to advance not only the framework but the CodeIgniter community as well. They've introduced three new things - CodeIgniter Reactor, Core and UserVoice.

EllisLab, Inc. is formally announcing CodeIgniter Reactor, a community driven branch of CodeIgniter that will enable faster adoption of the best community submitted code to the CodeIgniter open source PHP framework. CodeIgniter Reactor will be available the first quarter of 2011. A second branch, CodeIgniter Core, will be maintained by EllisLab and incorporate the best of Reactor at a slower, more enterprise-friendly pace.

The Reactor branch will be the one headed up by the six engineers they selected from the CI community. EllisLab has handed this branch off into their capable hands. The Core branch will remain as-is and will be updated as EllisLab sees the need for some of their products. The UserVoice system has been set up to allow other developers a voice in what they think needs to be included in the next versions of the framework. If you're interested in contributing, you can find that here.