Dear Sling users, The Apache Sling developers have been discussing migrating the next Sling release to the feature model. You can read more about the feature model at [1],[2] and the migration plans at [3].
We are confident that users and developers of Sling alike will be better served with the feature model. We will aim to make the transition as seamless as possible for our users, but there will be some differences at runtime, and the most important one is that there is no WAR file support. The concrete impact is that as of Sling 12 you will no longer be able to download a WAR file of the Sling Starter. The archetypes will also be tailored for building feature model applications, so no WAR support there. You will still have the provisioning model tooling around and the older archetypes for building your own apps, even if it hasn't seem that much attention lately. If WAR support for the Sling Starter is important for you, please let us know so we can understand how to best manage this transition. Thanks, Robert [1]: https://sling.apache.org/documentation/development/feature-model.html [2]: https://github.com/apache/sling-org-apache-sling-feature [3]: https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/SLING/Migrating+the+Sling+Starter+to+the+Feature+Model