Installing any Communities feature pack will require the latest AEM service pack be installed first.
The latest AEM service pack is SP2.
The latest Communities feature pack is FP5 (1.8.448).
All details are included on the Deploying Communities doc page.
Notice you will see Dependency Warnings, which may be ignored only if SP1 or SP2 is installed. The two hotfix packages are included in the service packs. But the warnings remain in the case of someone who, for whatever reason, has not installed the service packs.
Last - I'm not certain what is meant by "running in publish mode". All author and publish instances of AEM should have the same set of service packs and feature packs installed.
- JK