Release Notes for XWiki 8.1

Version 9.1 by Marius Dumitru Florea on 2016/05/24

This is the release notes for XWiki Commons, XWiki Rendering, XWiki Platform and XWiki Enterprise. They share the same release notes as they are released together and have the same version.

<insert description of release here>

New and Noteworthy (since XWiki 8.0)

Full list of issues fixed and Dashboard for 8.1.

Requires Java 8

Java 8 is now required to run XWiki. If you use an earlier version of Java, you'll get an error while starting XWiki such as:

java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
[...]
Caused by: java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: org/xwiki/tools/jetty/listener/NotifyListener : Unsupported major.minor version 52.0
[...]

Tips Panel

A new Tips Panel has been added by default. Example:

tippanel-1.png

tippanel-2.png

Sandbox Relocation

The Sandbox pages were previously accessible through a link in the Quick Links Panel. This link has been removed and instead a Sandbox entry has been added in the Applications Panel

sandbox-appbar.png

In addition the message about the shortcut key to use the "Jump To Page" feature has been moved to the new Tips Panel.

Here's how the home page looks like now:

home.png

Documents Macro Improvement

The Documents Macro now supports a location parameter to display all documents having their full reference matching the location value. 

For example:

{{documents location="Sand"/}}

Gives:

documents-macro-location.png

RSS Macro Improvements

The RSS Macro now supports feeds delivered over HTTPS. Additionally, it now uses its own user-agent string, XWiki/VERSION, where VERSION is the version of XWiki in use.

Extension Manager improvements

Repair invalid extensions

The Extension Manager now tries to repair automatically any invalid dependency and also provides a "Repair" button to repair specific invalid extensions.

repair.png

repairplan.png

Apply namespaces constraints in the UI

The namespaces constraints introduced in 8.0 are now taken into account in the UI which won't propose an option that will fail in the install plan.

Move to farm

It's now possible to install on farm an extension installed in a subwiki directly from the UI.

installonfarm.png

Dependency on root

When using Extension Manager from main wiki it's now allowed to install/upgrade an extension which require upgrading/install farm level dependency. It also automatically propose to install on farm a new dependency which indicate it as constraint. This will make easier to deal with extension have an API that have to be installed on root and a XAR extension UI that should usualy be install on a wiki.

It's still forbidden from subwiki in the standard UI (any script with programming right can enable it in the install request). That might change in the future but need to be discussed more.

Managed dependencies

Extension Manager now support the concept of managed dependencies. It's pretty much the same thing that the <dependencyManagement> in Maven.

It still need to be supported in the Repository Application. See https://jira.xwiki.org/browse/XWIKI-13281.

Flavors improvements

  • Known flavors are not validated anymore before ending up in the flavor picker of the Distribution Wizard. This speed up a lot the use case where you just want to install default XWiki Flavor or XE UI. See Flavor Module for more details.
  • Flavors are now also searched in the local repository. This makes easier to embedded flavors in a distribution for setups with no network access.

Synchronization of user avatar from LDAP

Binary photos stored in LDAP can be synchronized now to XWiki user avatar. New options are added to control this feature:

ldap-photo.png

Please note that user avatar will not be updated from LDAP if user set custom avatar with filename other than specified in XWiki preferences.

Active Installs

New widget displayed on the dashboard to see the number of Active Installs count per XWiki Cycle version:

versionspercycle.png

Miscellaneous

  • The Annotations Application's Administration section has been updated to present the exception spaces as "locations", using the documentTree macro. The behavior has not been changed.

    annotationsAdminSection.png

  • The Gadget's title has now a default value which is internationalized.
  • Put a link to the product home page in the footer by default
  • Template providers that are restricted to certain pages are now also available on the children of those pages.
  • The Document Tree Macro has a new parameter to limit the number of child nodes displayed when a parent node is expanded for the first time.
  • The xwiki.usedefaultweb parameter from xwiki.cfg has been removed. See below.
  • Job module does not validate stored status at startup. This might improve a lot the startup time when there is a lot of status. Also there seems to still be use cases where XStream get lost in edge case when parsing, this was blocking the whole XWiki startup for a very long time.

See the full list of JIRA issues fixed in this release.

For Developers

<developer feature N>

<description of developer feature N>

Deprecated and Retired projects

<description of deprecated and retired projects>

Upgrades

The following dependencies have been upgraded:

  • <list libraries that have been upgraded>

Miscellaneous

<other dev stuff to add and link to JIRA for all issues fixed>

Translations

The following translations have been updated: 

Tested Browsers & Databases

The QA Tests are executed after the release has been done. Thus, they are being prepared now and will be published soon.

Performances tests compared to <last super stable version>

<a summary of the comparison with latest super stable version>

More details on <link to the test report>.

Known issues

Backward Compatibility and Migration Notes

General Notes

When upgrading make sure you compare your xwiki.cfg, xwiki.properties and web.xml files with the newest version since some configuration parameters may have been modified or added. Note that you should add xwiki.store.migration=1 so that XWiki will attempt to automatically migrate your current database to the new schema. Make sure you backup your Database before doing anything.

Issues specific to XWiki <version>

<issues specific to the project>

API Breakages

The following APIs were modified since XWiki 8.0:

  • ? return type makes signature more complex for nothing
    • Violation type:
      java.method.returnTypeTypeParametersChanged
    • Code:
      ## Old:
      method java.util.List<? extends org.xwiki.extension.ExtensionDependency> org.xwiki.extension.AbstractExtension::getDependencies()

      ## New:
      method java.util.List<org.xwiki.extension.ExtensionDependency> org.xwiki.extension.AbstractExtension::getDependencies()
  • ? return type makes signature more complex for nothing
    • Violation type:
      java.method.returnTypeTypeParametersChanged
    • Code:
      ## Old:
      method java.util.Collection<? extends org.xwiki.extension.ExtensionDependency> org.xwiki.extension.Extension::getDependencies()

      ## New:
      method java.util.Collection<org.xwiki.extension.ExtensionDependency> org.xwiki.extension.Extension::getDependencies()
  • ? return type makes signature more complex for nothing
    • Violation type:
      java.method.returnTypeTypeParametersChanged
    • Code:
      ## Old:
      method java.util.Collection<? extends org.xwiki.extension.ExtensionDependency> org.xwiki.extension.wrap.WrappingExtension<E extends org.xwiki.extension.Extension>::getDependencies()

      ## New:
      method java.util.Collection<org.xwiki.extension.ExtensionDependency> org.xwiki.extension.wrap.WrappingExtension<E extends org.xwiki.extension.Extension>::getDependencies()
  • ? return type makes signature more complex for nothing
    • Violation type:
      java.method.returnTypeTypeParametersChanged
    • Code:
      ## Old:
      method java.util.List<? extends org.xwiki.extension.ExtensionDependency> org.xwiki.extension.AbstractExtension::getDependencies()

      ## New:
      method java.util.List<org.xwiki.extension.ExtensionDependency> org.xwiki.extension.AbstractExtension::getDependencies()
  • ? return type makes signature more complex for nothing
    • Violation type:
      java.method.returnTypeTypeParametersChanged
    • Code:
      ## Old:
      method java.util.Collection<? extends org.xwiki.extension.ExtensionDependency> org.xwiki.extension.Extension::getDependencies()

      ## New:
      method java.util.Collection<org.xwiki.extension.ExtensionDependency> org.xwiki.extension.Extension::getDependencies()
  • ? return type makes signature more complex for nothing
    • Violation type:
      java.method.returnTypeTypeParametersChanged
    • Code:
      ## Old:
      method java.util.Collection<? extends org.xwiki.extension.ExtensionDependency> org.xwiki.extension.wrap.WrappingExtension<E extends org.xwiki.extension.Extension>::getDependencies()

      ## New:
      method java.util.Collection<org.xwiki.extension.ExtensionDependency> org.xwiki.extension.wrap.WrappingExtension<E extends org.xwiki.extension.Extension>::getDependencies()
  • CopyStatusPage page object was renamed to CopyOrRenameStatusPage since it is needed in both places.
    • Violation type:
      java.method.returnTypeChanged
    • Code:
      ## Old:
      method org.xwiki.test.ui.po.CopyStatusPage org.xwiki.test.ui.po.CopyOverwritePromptPage::clickCopyButton()

      ## New:
      method org.xwiki.test.ui.po.CopyOrRenameStatusPage org.xwiki.test.ui.po.CopyOverwritePromptPage::clickCopyButton()
  • CopyStatusPage page object was renamed to CopyOrRenameStatusPage since it is needed in both places.
    • Violation type:
      java.method.returnTypeChanged
    • Code:
      ## Old:
      method org.xwiki.test.ui.po.CopyStatusPage org.xwiki.test.ui.po.CopyPage::clickCopyButton()

      ## New:
      method org.xwiki.test.ui.po.CopyOrRenameStatusPage org.xwiki.test.ui.po.CopyPage::clickCopyButton()
  • CopyStatusPage page object was renamed to CopyOrRenameStatusPage since it is needed in both places.
    • Violation type:
      java.class.removed
    • Code:
      ## Old:
      class org.xwiki.test.ui.po.CopyStatusPage
  • Minor change unlikely to break anything in practice
    • Violation type:
      java.method.returnTypeChanged
    • Code:
      ## Old:
      method void org.xwiki.test.ui.TestUtils::setDefaultCredentials(org.apache.commons.httpclient.UsernamePasswordCredentials)

      ## New:
      method org.apache.commons.httpclient.UsernamePasswordCredentials org.xwiki.test.ui.TestUtils::setDefaultCredentials(org.apache.commons.httpclient.UsernamePasswordCredentials)
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