🚀 OpenMRS Platform 2.8.0 is Now Available!

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Hello OpenMRS Community! :waving_hand:

We’re thrilled to announce that OpenMRS Platform 2.8.0 is officially released and ready for production use! :tada:

After extensive testing through our alpha and beta phases, we’re confident this release brings significant improvements to scalability, performance, and developer experience while maintaining the stability you rely on.

:sparkles: What’s New in 2.8.0

:cloud: Cloud-Ready Architecture

  • Complete S3 Storage Integration

  • ElasticSearch Support

  • Distributed Caching

  • Production-Ready PostgreSQL

:gear: Platform Modernization

  • Java 21 & 24 Support

  • Hibernate Search 6.2.4

  • Security Hardening

  • Provider Management in Core

:artist_palette: Improved User Experience

  • Redesigned Installation Wizard

  • Better PostgreSQL Setup

  • Enhanced SDK Support

:rocket: Ready to Upgrade?

Quick Start Options:

:heart: Community Impact

This release represents incredible collaboration across our community:

  • 130+ Pull Requests merged

  • 12 Organizations contributed

  • Contributors from DIGI, PIH, Palladium and many more!

Special thanks to @wikumc @dkayiwa @mogoodrich @ruhanga @jonathan @raff @mherman22 @ibacher @kmakombe

:test_tube: What We Learned from Alpha/Beta

Your testing feedback was invaluable:

  • Storage Service Stability: We addressed all reported S3 configuration issues

  • ElasticSearch Reliability: Startup and performance issues resolved

  • ProviderRole APIs: Enhanced completeness and accuracy based on your input

  • Installation Experience: Streamlined based on real-world deployment feedback

Support Channels:

  • Technical Questions: You can ask in this talk thread or platform on Slack

  • Bug Reports: JIRA or this forum

:crystal_ball: Looking Ahead

OpenMRS 2.8.0 sets the foundation for modern, scalable OpenMRS deployments.

:folded_hands: Thank You!

This release wouldn’t be possible without our incredible community. Whether you contributed code, testing, documentation, or feedback - thank you for making OpenMRS better for healthcare providers worldwide.

Ready to try 2.8.0? Share your upgrade experience below! We’d love to hear how the new features work in your environment.

Questions? Ask away - we’re here to help make your upgrade smooth and successful.

Happy deploying! :hospital:

Full release notes and technical details: OpenMRS Platform 2.8.0 Release Notes

cc: @dkayiwa, @wikumc @ruhanga @grace, @ibacher, @jayasanka, @mseaton, @mogoodrich, @burke, @janflowers, @paul, @mksd, @sharif @beryl @veronica @dev3, @dev4, @dev5

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Well done @suubi7 .

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This is truly fantastic news!! :tada: :tada: This Platform 2.8.0 release is a major milestone for our community and implementer’s ability to support cloud-based scaling where needed. Phenomenal!! :cloud:

A Request to Implementers: Please, try out Platform 2.8! And if you have any issues, please let us know ASAP, e.g. using this thread - we’d love to hear from you. It’s really important to all of us that we make the OpenMRS Platform work for teams who are scaling with national deployments or cloud needs in general!

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Awesome news!

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Thanks @suubi7 . Could you please release Core 2.8.0 and Platform 2.8.0 in JIRA?

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FYI @suubi7 I believe these are the UI-pages you’ll want in Jira. They were a bit hard to find since Jira changed it’s UI in the last few months.

Core: https://openmrs.atlassian.net/projects/TRUNK?selectedItem=com.atlassian.jira.jira-projects-plugin%3Arelease-page

Platform: https://openmrs.atlassian.net/projects/PLAT?selectedItem=com.atlassian.jira.jira-projects-plugin%3Arelease-page

As you can see, it seems like we need to improve our release management in JIRA - e.g the board names make no sense anymore for Core, and there was no release set up for Platform (yet).

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Thanks @grace was wondering where to start from, this is awesome. I agree we really need to improve our release management.

Also when I navigate to these pages I get an error. I think I dont have the right permissions

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Thanks Joshua - yeah that’s tricky to do without access :joy:

Just tried to bump up your access level to “Approver” on both TRUNK and PLAT - can you try those links again? Might need a hard refresh just in case.

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BTW I also updated the Platform 2.8.0 Release Notes wiki page to include the correct contribution counts. This requires doing the following:

  1. Go to the relevant GitHub Release notes:
  1. Copy-paste contributions into this spreadsheet, categorize the contributions, and then create the graph and ensure that each specific contributor is given credit in the Wiki release notes. It does take some time especially because you need to figure out which organization (or volunteer status) someone was working with, and specifically at the time of their contribution.

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Follow-up Questions for @dkayiwa and @suubi7 and @wikumc and @mherman22 :

  1. What modules did I miss? I feel certain there must be more modules that were updated for the Platform 2.8 release.

  2. Shouldn’t we have GitHub release notes for the Platform repo? Releases · openmrs/openmrs-distro-platform · GitHub To help capture contributions via PLAT and in this repo

  3. Was the OWA Module a key part of this release? I ask because there are no release notes in GitHub for that module: Releases · openmrs/openmrs-module-owa · GitHub And the Wiki release notes mention version 1.10, but that was released in 2018 - but the latest tag visible in GitHub is OWA OMOD version 1.15, from 2024. Why would we use 1.10?

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Thanks @grace should be ready to go now.

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That must have been a type. @suubi7 can you fix this?

The platform is the core war file bundled with these modules and owa:

The above bundled modules together with the openmrs core war file are what we collectively call the platform.

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Fixed the version typo @grace @dkayiwa , also did the release in jira @raff

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Please, which one can download and install for my Ubuntu local server 22.04

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@suubi7 thanks! Would you be willing to do a small maintenance release of 2.8.1 anytime next week?

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Definitely I don’t mind.

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Have you tried following the SDK installation process. 2.8.0 can work on your Ubuntu machine.@dennito9

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Not yet. Can you help me how to go about it?

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Have you gone through this SDK walk through?

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Yeah. But as a beginner I will need your help :folded_hands: :folded_hands: