After the release of the first builds for Minecraft 1.21.4, we are happy to share some even more exciting news with everyone. Following the successful rollout of our Mojang-mapped server in 1.20.5, we are taking a big next step for the project:
Hardforking removes this unnecessary delay and sees Paper become its own independent project, streamlining development of the server and major missing API, such as our recent registry and item data component API. This does not mean that existing configs/API/behavior/etc. will be removed. Starting with 1.21.4, Paper will simply no longer be bound to Spigot's future changes, enabling us and the community to move forwards on our own terms.
We presume a large number of plugins to prefer Paper compatibility over Spigot already, given the current market share of the two projects. A huge upside for you is the considerably faster release speed of Paper during Minecraft releases, as mentioned prior. Post hardfork, we are able to update Paper to release-candidates, pre-releases and maybe even snapshots to get experimental builds out to everyone as early as possible.
Usage of server internals via paperweight-userdev will also continue to work as it has before, however, we recommend slowly preparing your plugin to run on a Mojang-mapped server with jar and reflection remapping disabled. This can be achieved with the
With the switch to Paper-API and later a Mojang-mapped server, your plugins may no longer run on Spigot. Paper's market share of 85-90% on recent versions (according to some of the largest plugins on bStats, including forks of Paper) should make it easy for you to support almost all of your users in the post-hardfork versions, even without being compatible with Spigot. Publishing plugins that require Paper can be done on numerous platforms, most notably Hangar and modrinth.
Our current compressed repo size is over 90MB - the new branch, despite having many many more commits, will be less than 35MB in packed size, meaning cloning the repository will become much faster once the old branches have been removed. On top of that, looking at the previous patch-file history will also be a lot easier thanks to cleaning up index and line changes from the history.
In order to preserve history, we have merged multiple git trees, including our full patch-file history, and those patches applied into real commits over the existing Spigot history. Older states containing decompiled Vanilla source files have been filtered. The history change unfortunately means that all open PRs will have to be closed later, and they cannot be force-pushed to target the new branch either. Please do not reopen PRs until we provide more detailed information on how to semi-automatically update old pull requests and have given the go-ahead for new ones.
Server admins: No action needed, but you might no longer be able to go back to Spigot starting with 1.21.4.
Plugin developers: No immediate action needed, but you should compile against Paper-API starting with 1.21.4.
Paper contributors: You will have to redo your PRs, but we will tell you more about that later and provide you with useful scripts and tools.
Forks/server hosts: Migrate any use of the old version branches (e.g.
Thank you for making the Paper organization into what it has become today, we're grateful that so many people choose to use our software! Focusing on preparations for this process took a toll on Paper pull requests and Hangar activity, but we'll be able to churn through these much faster afterwards!
Hard fork from our upstream
Since the project's inception, Paper has been built on top of Spigot, consistently staying up-to-date with features introduced to it. Today, Paper applies nearly 1600 additional patches with more than 130,000 lines of code over Spigot. As a result of such divergence, our strict policy to stay up-to-date with Spigot has been limiting the project, most noticeably with slower version updates since its updates to snapshots, pre-releases and release candidates are worked on behind closed doors.Hardforking removes this unnecessary delay and sees Paper become its own independent project, streamlining development of the server and major missing API, such as our recent registry and item data component API. This does not mean that existing configs/API/behavior/etc. will be removed. Starting with 1.21.4, Paper will simply no longer be bound to Spigot's future changes, enabling us and the community to move forwards on our own terms.
Server owners / administrators
As a server owner/administrator, there will be no change initially. For now, both bukkit.yml and spigot.yml will continue to work how they always have. Plugins already running on the stable 1.21.4 builds as well as plugins compiling to older versions of Spigot will also continue to run. As the plugin API of Paper and Spigot slowly diverge, the only potential worry may be plugins trying to use Spigot features introduced after the hardfork.We presume a large number of plugins to prefer Paper compatibility over Spigot already, given the current market share of the two projects. A huge upside for you is the considerably faster release speed of Paper during Minecraft releases, as mentioned prior. Post hardfork, we are able to update Paper to release-candidates, pre-releases and maybe even snapshots to get experimental builds out to everyone as early as possible.
Plugin developers
Just like for server owners, there will be no initial change in the plugin API. Existing methods inherited from Spigot are maintained and will continue to work. This includes methods deprecated by us, like legacy text/chat color. However, we will no longer pull all new API added to Spigot after hardfork. To avoid accidentally calling such methods, we strongly suggest building your plugin against the Paper-API dependency. We are still open to manually pulling some new upstream API into Paper to ensure plugin developers do not lose out on functionality, but you should not rely on it.Usage of server internals via paperweight-userdev will also continue to work as it has before, however, we recommend slowly preparing your plugin to run on a Mojang-mapped server with jar and reflection remapping disabled. This can be achieved with the
-Dpaper.disablePluginRemapping=true startup flag. If you aren't already using paperweight-userdev despite using internal Vanilla classes directly, you should move towards it. If you are, you don't need to do anything else, as you can simply later remove the obfuscation step and will be compatible with the future change - only reflective calls need to be addressed. However, we will give you ample time to prepare for this and will continue to automatically remap plugins for a while. Once that happens, it will become much easier to support multiple versions with little internal changes, which the obfuscated mappings and arbitrary CraftBukkit package relocation currently prevent. The single set of standard mappings will also make debugging and code-sharing easier.With the switch to Paper-API and later a Mojang-mapped server, your plugins may no longer run on Spigot. Paper's market share of 85-90% on recent versions (according to some of the largest plugins on bStats, including forks of Paper) should make it easy for you to support almost all of your users in the post-hardfork versions, even without being compatible with Spigot. Publishing plugins that require Paper can be done on numerous platforms, most notably Hangar and modrinth.
Moving our old version branches to a new repo
Because we are merging in API/API-implementation source file history and the new branch will have an entirely unrelated git commit history to the previous branches, we will eventually delete all older version branches, everything fromver/1.8.8 up to ver/1.21.3. If you are in any way referencing them on our current repository, make sure to update their URL to:
Our current compressed repo size is over 90MB - the new branch, despite having many many more commits, will be less than 35MB in packed size, meaning cloning the repository will become much faster once the old branches have been removed. On top of that, looking at the previous patch-file history will also be a lot easier thanks to cleaning up index and line changes from the history.
Paper contributors
Hardfork affects contributions to Paper dramatically, most of it for the better. With hardfork, the Paper repository will receive a full restructure, moving the entire API and API-implementation straight as source into the repository. Contributions to these can now directly be made on the .java files, without the need to edit/rebuild patches. Changes to Mojang-owned sources will still be based on patches, but each Vanilla source file will be represented by a single, per-file patch. For large changes, like anti-xray and moonrise, Paper will also offer the old feature-based patch approach on top of the previously described layout, combining the best of both techniques, next to an updated decompiler (Vineflower) and mappings set (Parchment).In order to preserve history, we have merged multiple git trees, including our full patch-file history, and those patches applied into real commits over the existing Spigot history. Older states containing decompiled Vanilla source files have been filtered. The history change unfortunately means that all open PRs will have to be closed later, and they cannot be force-pushed to target the new branch either. Please do not reopen PRs until we provide more detailed information on how to semi-automatically update old pull requests and have given the go-ahead for new ones.
Paper fork developers
The main change you will have to deal with is the updated decompiler and mappings. We will provide you with more information once our initial update process is finished. New versions of Paperweight patcher will be published to be compatible with our new repository structure. For now, make sure you change upstream targets of 1.21.3 and older to the new archive repository.Next steps/rough timeline
It's hard to give an exact timeline, but you will be able to follow the rough progress of our hard fork process in the following GitHub issue: https://github.com/PaperMC/Paper/issues/11735- We will spend the following weeks updating the repository by changing the patch structure and fixing endless patch conflicts from the updated decompiler and new set of local/parameter mappings.
- Once that is done, we will push these builds as experimental builds to ensure we didn't break any backwards compatibility or introduced any new issues.
- Once we have finished our tooling around forks and userdev, we will post an announcement on how to update forks and notify Paper contributors on how to properly update their pull requests to the new main branch.
TL;DR
This change allows us to work on snapshots, and to more freely work on major missing API. Contributions to Paper become a lot easier, and plugin development will become easier as well, both regarding API and server internals!Server admins: No action needed, but you might no longer be able to go back to Spigot starting with 1.21.4.
Plugin developers: No immediate action needed, but you should compile against Paper-API starting with 1.21.4.
Paper contributors: You will have to redo your PRs, but we will tell you more about that later and provide you with useful scripts and tools.
Forks/server hosts: Migrate any use of the old version branches (e.g.
ver/1.8.8, ver/1.21.1; everything below 1.21.4) to the new archive repository.Thank you for making the Paper organization into what it has become today, we're grateful that so many people choose to use our software! Focusing on preparations for this process took a toll on Paper pull requests and Hangar activity, but we'll be able to churn through these much faster afterwards!
