This changelog applies to:
RyTek3 Software Development Kit
RyTek3 Framework for Windows

RyTek3: End of Support

What’s Happening?

With the current changing climate of technologies that are available in software development, we’ve decided after many years of offering RyTek to our customers as a development platform, that we will be phasing out the availability of RyTek3 and the RyTek platform. We know we have promised to continue working on the RyTek platform as many of you love using Code LX and our RyTek framework to build great Windows applications every day – however, when we started the RyTek journey the software development industry (particularly Windows desktop apps) was a limited and un-intuitive space. We have come to this realization as of late when building our own in house RyTek applications for the first time in many years.

Nowadays, there are multi-platform languages, IDEs and SDKs that allow you to create amazing applications for multiple systems all at the same time from the same program. This is a much smarter way of developing applications and software, and we want to encourage our users to go down this route.

What does this mean?

• Developers will no longer be able to download the RyTek3 IDE, SDK and Framework to build RyTek applications for Windows as of March 1, 2017.47
• The RyTek3 platform will continue to receive security patches and important updates until December 31, 2018.
• Applications built on RyTek3 will continue to work until Microsoft Windows implements new (or removes old) features that break RyTek Applications.

We recommend that you move on to another platform, such as Xamarin Forms or the Windows Universal Platform. Using a language like C# and targeting multiple platforms and device types is the way to go.

What dates must I have things completed by?

If you wish to continue providing updates for your software for an interim period, you have until March 1, 2017 to download the RyTek software from https://www.ryanwalpole.com/rytek

RyTek will no longer receive any major updates including library updates, SDK updates and IDE updates. The only updates you will receive are security patches and vulnerability patches. These will only be offered until December 31, 2018*

Applications will work on Windows if they were built with RyTek3 indefinitely**

You should move your applications from the RyTek platform by December 31, 2018 at the absolute latest to avoid your applications becoming insecure, not safe to use and target-able by malicious sources.

Summary

Thank you so much to our wonderful RyTek enthusiasts for giving us a great run. After eight years, we’re happy that we can say goodbye on this positive note as we look towards a better future in software engineering.

 

*Unless the security patch is believed to be important enough to deliver outside of the EOS date.
**Changes made to the system by Microsoft may break these in the future. If MIcrosoft doesn’t make changes that break RyTek, this will theoretically allow RyTek apps to run indefinitely.