1 Release notes for FusionForge 5.1
2 ---------------------------------
4 FusionForge 5.1 is another incremental step over 5.0, although it's a
5 large step in some regards, with about 3000 commits since version 5.0.
7 The FusionForge team would like to dedicate this release to the memory
8 of Alexandre Neymann, who passed away in March 2011. Alexandre was
9 one of the founding members of the FusionForge project in 2009, and
10 one of its most active developers. His death has meant a great loss
13 On the user interface front, the project summary pages and users'
14 personal pages are now built out of blocks called "widgets" that can
15 be rearranged at will; these widgets (taken from Codendi) allow
16 greater flexibility on how the pages look. A new theme, called Funky,
17 is now available, with a more modern feel (contributed by Capgemini).
18 In the same field, the old help window has been replaced with a new
19 unobtrusive tooltip system (Alcatel-Lucent). A less visible aspect is
20 that the generated webpages are now much closer to full XHTML
23 Among the improvements in features, the document manager has been
24 vastly rewritten (by Capgemini again), with more features and an
25 improved usability; more improvements are planned for the next
26 release, but this should bring the docman to something we're no longer
29 Many improvements in the trackers have been contributed (by
30 Alcatel-Lucent), including a progress bar and improvements in sorting.
32 The permissions system has been enhanced and made more flexible, with
33 the new ability to have several roles at once in the same project and
34 to share roles across projects (contributed by Roland Mas as part of
37 New projects can now cloned from one of a set of configurable
38 templates, thus allowing forges to have standard shapes for their
39 common project organizations (Roland Mas, Coclico).
41 New plugins have been written or merged from Codendi as part of the
42 Coclico project: Mailman, Forumml, Hudson and SoapAdmin. Not all are
43 production-ready yet, but they're made available for the adventurous.
44 Other new plugins include a gravatar plugin (Alain Peyrat) and a
45 "blocks" plugin allowing to add free descriptions in several places
48 Behind the scenes, the configuration system has also been made
49 simpler, it now uses standard *.ini files that are taken into account
50 immediately; the Apache configuration files are also splitted out into
51 independent components, rather than a large generated file. (Both by
54 Another improvement making installation easier is the availability
55 packages in RPM format for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and CentOS, in
56 addition to the *.deb packages for Debian-based distributions.
57 Installation from source is still supported, of course.
59 As usual, this release provides scripts to migrate what needs to be
60 migrated to the new schemes (in this case, for the database schema,
61 the configuration variables and the existing permissions). Care
62 should still be taken to check the results of these migrations, as a
65 Release notes for FusionForge 5.0
66 ---------------------------------
68 FusionForge 5.0 is still an incremental step over 4.8, but many
69 changes have been made, some of which may require caution when
72 In particular, the rewriting of the version control subsystem created
73 the possibility for many new VCS tools to be integrated, and indeed
74 several new plugins were implemented (Arch, Bazaar, Darcs, Git and
75 Mercurial). To avoid crowding the chroot, all repositories are now
76 hosted under a two-level subdirectory structure. For instance, where
77 you had a CVS repositories stored under
78 /var/lib/gforge/chroot/cvsroot/<project>, you'll now have it under
79 .../chroot/scmrepos/cvs/<project>. As a consequence, you need to move
80 the repositories by hand and/or add symlinks. Previously existing
81 symlinks will also have to be updated, as well as previously existing
82 working copies obtained by users.
84 Also, the Mediawiki plugin was rewritten to allow for each project to
85 get their own independent wiki. The wiki for project foo-bar is now
86 stored in the plugin_mediakiki_foo_bar in the same database as the
87 rest of the forge. This means the data should be migrated from the
88 existing database to this new location. Depending on your setup and
89 the amount of data involved, it might make sense to either cut and
90 paste by hand or dump the tables and reload them in the new schema.
92 On the internal side of things, access to the database has been
93 converted from the db_query() abstraction layer to the
94 db_query_params() one. This means SQL queries are no longer built as
95 strings with unwieldy and fragile escaping code, while ensuring no
96 data coming from the user can be used for SQL injection attacks. The
97 db_query() function, while deprecated, is still present for the
98 benefit of out-of-tree code that might use it. It might be removed at
99 some point in the future, so maintainers of local plugins or
100 enhancements are encouraged to migrate their code to
101 db_query_params(). For really complex queries that need to be built
102 dynamically, there's also a db_query_qpa() abstraction, with a
103 db_construct_qpa() method to manipulate "QPA" (query+params array)
106 On a more visible note, the default theme has been reworked to
107 increase the accessibility of the web pages; this rewrite also brings
108 better maintainability, easier customisation by CSS and more
112 Release notes for FusionForge 4.8
113 ---------------------------------
115 FusionForge 4.8 is an incremental step from 4.7, and the changes are
116 less far-reaching than the ones in 4.7. Most notably, they include:
117 - A new project classification system based on tags (with a tag cloud).
118 - A new reporting page on the FRS displaying the number of downloads
120 - The “Project List” can now display a list of all projects.
121 - The “wiki” plugin now uses the latest PHPwiki code.
123 The upgrade from 4.7 should be straightforward.
126 Release notes for FusionForge 4.7
127 ---------------------------------
129 This is the first public release of FusionForge. FusionForge is based
130 on GForge, and started as an identical copy, with only a name change
131 to avoid confusion with the proprietary versions of GForge (known as
132 GForge Advanced Server or GForge AS). As such, it benefits from
133 mature code and known-good infrastructure, and builds on it for the
136 This 4.7 release is focused on bringing the recent evolutions out to
137 the community in an official stable release. This should provide a
138 solid base as a starting point for community-based development, making
139 it easier for enhancements to be maintained. The FusionForge name was
140 chosen to reflect this: this is a community effort, and we hope to
141 hear about your improvements. Contributing these improvements would
142 make their future long-term maintenance easier for everyone.
144 Major changes since previous versions (of GForge) include:
146 - Support for PostgreSQL 8.x.
147 - Translations are now managed by gettext.
148 - Support for several configurations running on the same code.
149 - Improved security, no need for PHP register_globals.
150 - Available as full install CD.
151 - New wiki plugins (using MediaWiki or phpWiki).
152 - New online_help plugin.
153 - New phpwebcalendar plugin.
154 - New project hierarchy plugin.
156 Things to keep in mind when installing:
157 - FusionForge is based on GForge, and the renaming is quite recent.
158 So the code still contains lots of references to GForge. This will
159 be fixed as time passes.
160 - Full text search using the primitives provided by PostgreSQL 8.3
161 isn't quite complete yet.
162 - Not all plugins are packaged for all distributions yet.
164 Things to keep in mind when upgrading:
165 - Since internationalisation was changed from a hand-made system to
166 standard gettext, locally customised translations will no longer
167 override standard ones. This will be addressed in a future release.
169 For more up-to-date information, please visit http://fusionforge.org/
170 or http://fusionforge.fusionforge.org/ -- you can even join us on IRC
173 -- The FusionForge development team