Upgrade from 1.9.x to magento 2

Question

Is there a safe way to upgrade from v1.9.x to v2?

Also I'd like to know if themes made for v1.9.x will work in v2?

Answer 1

Magento 2 is a complete rewrite, or replatform as they call it, there is no way to upgrade from 1.x to 2.x

Also all themes and extensions need to be rewritten for Magento 2

There are tools that help you with migrating a M1 database to a new M2 store and to convert extensions but that's about it.

Answer 2

Fshmengler beat me to it, but yes both themes & extensions built for 1.x won't be compatible with 2.x due to major changes in Magento's architecture. (For example Magento 2 theme files go under /pub instead of both /app & /skin)

More info here: http://devdocs.magento.com/guides/v2.0/migration/bk-migration-guide.html

Like he said, Magento & others have built tools for migrating the data over.

Here's Magento's migration tool: http://devdocs.magento.com/guides/v2.0/migration/migration-tool.html