Michael Stoyke, one of Mojang’s PC programmers, has take to Twitter to reassure modders that updating their mods from Minecraft version 1.8 to the new 1.9 will be “less painful”. It means anyone optimising mods for the current 1.8 versions of Minecraft shouldn’t have to go through a terrible re-writing process when the next update is released.
We will have mostly new gameplay features in 1.9 and only very few internal changes, so that mods will be much easier to update from 1.8.x
— Searge (@SeargeDP) April 27, 2015
What that means is, if you update your mods to 1.8 now, it won't be "wasted" time, because it's less painful to update to 1.9 later.
— Searge (@SeargeDP) April 27, 2015
So if you’re working on mod compatibility at the moment and were feeling exasperated at the idea of version 1.9, let out a sigh of relief now. And of those promised gameplay features, expect to see changes to the Ender Dragon.