Liferay Upgrade Planner

Catalog all hook, ext, theme, layout, and portlet plugins. Each maps to a different OSGi extension point in 7.x, so this list becomes your migration backlog. Anything not on the list will silently stop working.

The Ant-based Plugins SDK is gone. Recreate your projects in a Liferay Workspace and build with Gradle/Blade. Use Blade CLI to scaffold modules and to convert existing plugins where possible.

blade init my-workspace
cd my-workspace
blade convert -s my-old-plugin

Hook and Ext plugins no longer exist. Each customization becomes an OSGi component at a specific extension point — ServiceWrapper, ModelListener, DynamicInclude, MVCActionCommand, OSGi Configuration, etc. Map each one before writing code.

Velocity (.vm) templates were deprecated in 7.0 and later removed, so 7.4 and DXP only run FreeMarker (.ftl). Port portal_normal.vm, navigation.vm, ADTs and web content templates to .ftl, and rebuild themes with the Node/Gulp theme tooling.

The monolithic portal-service API was split into hundreds of app modules. Many com.liferay.portal.kernel.* classes moved to their owning module APIs. Expect to fix imports across the whole codebase and declare the new module dependencies.

*LocalServiceUtil facades still exist for compatibility, but in OSGi modules you should inject services with @Reference. Regenerate Service Builder code against 7.0 and review service.xml for changes.

Embedded Lucene is replaced by Elasticsearch. The embedded ES mode is for development only; production requires a separate Elasticsearch cluster configured via the OSGi search connector settings.

Liferay 7.0 requires JDK 8 and a current app server (e.g. Tomcat 8). Update your runtime and JVM before deploying.

More configuration is exposed as typed OSGi configuration in System Settings / Instance Settings. Review portal-ext.properties for keys that are now managed in the UI or via .config files.

The Lexicon/Clay component set is the standard for 7.1 UI. AlloyUI is on the way out — start migrating custom widgets toward Clay markup and tags.

Compile your modules against 7.1 and address deprecation warnings now; several 7.0-deprecated methods are removed in later releases.

Liferay 7.1 supports Elasticsearch 6.1–6.8 (and Elasticsearch 7 through the Liferay Connector to Elasticsearch 7 on later patches). Elasticsearch 2.x from early 7.0 is not supported.

Update the liferay.workspace.target.platform.version in gradle.properties so BOM-managed dependency versions resolve against 7.2.

liferay.workspace.target.platform.version=7.2.1-1

Methods deprecated back in 7.0/7.1 are removed in 7.2. Rebuild every module against the 7.2 target platform and fix any unresolved references.

Liferay 7.2 supports Elasticsearch 6.5–6.8, and Elasticsearch 7 through the Elasticsearch 7 connector depending on patch level. Confirm your cluster matches before upgrading.

Several core apps were rewritten on React with Clay 3. If you customized their JSPs or markup, re-validate those customizations against the new front end.

Liferay 7.3 dropped Elasticsearch 6. Provision an Elasticsearch 7.9–7.17 cluster (later 7.3 updates also support 8.x) and reconnect the search connector.

7.3 supports both JDK 8 and JDK 11. If you plan to move to JDK 11, test module compilation and any reflection-heavy code under it now.

7.4 consolidated many apps and introduced Objects and an expanded headless API. Recompile all modules against the 7.4 target platform and review any custom entities that overlap with Objects.

More legacy properties were removed or moved to OSGi configuration in 7.4. Diff your portal-ext.properties against the 7.4 defaults and migrate anything that no longer applies.

APIs deprecated across the 7.x line are removed in 7.4. Rebuild and fix any remaining references before deploying.

Liferay 7.4 runs on JDK 8 and JDK 11. Standardize your build and runtime on JDK 11 now, because the quarterly releases remove JDK 8 and move on to JDK 17 and 21.

Liferay 7.4 supports Elasticsearch 7.14–7.17, and Elasticsearch 8.8+ on later updates (DXP U81+, CE GA102+). Elasticsearch 7 is end of life, so moving to 8.x now saves a step later.