I am tempted to upgrade to 2.4, but don’t want to lose the work to set up using the custom context module. Will the upgrade keep that module active? Will I have to redo anything?
You will have to query existing users to see if it works on 2.4. The module has had almost no maintenance from the original author and is not supported in FreePBX since upcoming changes will break it as well as eliminate the need for it.
Thanks. Can you point me to the new features that will eliminate the need for custom context and how they work? I could not find any other way to solve that problem.
“upcoming changes” - they don’t exist yet.
I don’t think anyone in a production environment that has custom-contexts will be willing to upgrade 
I cringe every time there is an update because I know eventually I’ll have quite a mess to fix when custom-context breaks.
I have one installation that needs custom contexts that I’ve been dragging my feet on; will the new way be out in the next few months or much later than that?
If someone out there has tried 2.4 with custom contexts and it still works I’d love to know about it.
The earliest I would expect the changes would be in the next major release. The typical release cycle for major releases is about 6 months. It’s a matter of resources. I suspect that custom contexts have issues in 2.4. IIRC they have the option of providing destinations. Given that, I can assure that it has not been ported to work with the new destination registry which would have limitations for some uses. Beyond that - the internal changes were not that drastic wrt to what it might care about so it may not be too bad.
There are always a couple of possibilities to address the problem. Pay us to do what ever porting is necessary to get custom context to work with 2.4, Pay the original author. Or try to get some funds to get the new routing/trunks infrastructure assured to be in the next release and done earlier. It’s a fair amount of work to overhaul that section which is why it has not been done yet - but it needs to happen for this and for other considerations such as the potential for mult-tenant and other related needs some day.
Firstly, I bit the bullet and tried to install Custom Context and at least it did not break my setup although I am having some issue with calls that cannot be picked with Xlite at the moment but think that has something to do with upgrade Asterisk or FrePBX 2.4 itself not CustomContext.
In saying that i cannot say that CustomContext is fully operational for two reasons.
- only using it for the first time and second, looks bloody complicated from a feature point of view.
- minimal configuration until I know how it works proerly, So still working my way through it.
Basically my requirement are simple, route certain clients to certain trunks. That is all so far.