Here some things I noticed/encountered while migrating from the beta version to RC1.

In app/config/core.php the class name for ACL has changed. Instead of

Configure::write('Acl.classname', 'DB_ACL');

it is now

Configure::write('Acl.classname', 'DbAcl');

The model-based storage engine for the cache (cake/libs/cache/model.php) has been removed.

Probably the first thing you notice when you migrate to the new version are the warnings caused by the deprecated “vendor” function. This function has been replaced by App::import(). Unfortunately, you can’t perform a simple search/replace operation as files/directories which don’t follow the cake conventions have to be treated differently (see also Loading vendor files). Examples:

App::import('Vendor', 'follows/cake/conventions'); // .php is automatically appended
App::import('Vendor', 'unconventional', array('file' => 'doesnt/follow/Cake/Conventions.php');

Another newly deprecated method you might use is Model::execute(). It has been replaced by Model::query(). This time you can use search/replace.

With Model::find() I encountered a situation, where the method didn’t return any data. I don’t know whether it is a bug or simply no longer supported. Here the code I used (simplified):

$this->Location->find('list', array('fields' => 'id, name'));

It performs the correct SQL statement, but somehow the preparation of the result doesn’t work. A simple workaround is to use the model alias for the field names:

$this->Location->find('list', array('fields' => 'Location.id, Location.name'));

Or as mentioned by Xr in a comment:

$this->Location->find('list');

A new feature of the FormHelper caused a visual problem in my application: it adds a class with the name of the input type to the respective input field (e.g. “text” to a text field, “password” to a password field, etc.). As I already used a CSS class with the name “text”, my forms looked a bit ugly after the update ;-)

The latest issue I encountered was a blank page (only the performed SQL statements were shown). It was caused by the following snippet which worked with the beta version (don’t ask me why there was an exit at the end of the method *g*):

public function xy() {
    ...
    $this->render('aview');
    exit;
}

After removing the exit, the view was rendered as expected, obviously something changed internally.

All in all, the migration was quite smooth. Thanks to the cake team for this piece of cake :)

Here some things I noticed while upgrading Noserub from pre-beta to beta:

The folder “cake/locale” has been removed. It contained the template for translating the core. It seems this file has been moved to the translations project on CakeForge.

The files AppController, AppModel, and AppHelper have been moved from “cake” to “cake/libs/controller”, “cake/libs/model”, resp. “cake/libs/view/helpers”.

The folder “cake/libs/view/templates” has been removed and its subfolders are now direct subfolders of “cake/libs/view”.

In “app/config/sql” three files have been added: “db_acl.php”, “i18n.php”, and “sessions.php”.

In “app/config/core.php” the constant COMPRESS_CSS has been removed. On the other hand three new config entries were added: “App.encoding”, “Asset.filter.css”, and “Asset.filter.js”. The two latter are commented out by default.

While running the application I got some messages that the functions loadModel(), listClasses() and Model::generateList() are now deprecated. Thanks to the help messages it was easy to fix them.

The only bigger issue I encountered up to now was a change in the API for writing custom validation methods. Here some code from my model to illustrate the problem:

var $validate = array('passwd2'  => array('rule' => 'validatePasswd2'));

function validatePasswd2($value, $params = array()) {
    if ($this->data['Identity']['passwd'] !== $value) {
        return false;
    } else {
        return true;
    }
}

This code worked fine with the pre-beta, but with the beta version the type of $value has been changed, it is now an array instead of a string (see the explanation for ticket 3797). And so the code above will always return false. To fix it, the comparison has to be changed to:

if ($this->data['Identity']['passwd'] !== $value['passwd2'])

That’s it, good luck with upgrading :)