1 Release notes for FusionForge 5.2
2 ---------------------------------
4 FusionForge 5.2 is another incremental step over 5.1, with about 2600
7 There have been no in-depth rewrites this time, only a number of
8 improvements to various parts of the code. The document manager
9 steadily grows in functionality, new widgets are available for users'
10 personal pages, the SCM plugins grew new features for hooks (on
11 supported systems), the trackers now offer a new view for roadmaps.
12 New plugins include a Message plugin allowing to display a global
13 message on the forge, and a MoinMoinWiki plugin.
15 Many bugs were of course fixed during the course of this development
18 As before, this release comes with packages for Red Hat and Debian
19 systems (and derived distributions), as well as a rewritten installer
20 script for users of other systems (and those who prefer more manual
21 installations). This release provides scripts to migrate what needs
22 to be migrated to the new schemes (for the database schema). Care
23 should still be taken to check the results of these migrations, as a
26 Release notes for FusionForge 5.1
27 ---------------------------------
29 FusionForge 5.1 is another incremental step over 5.0, although it's a
30 large step in some regards, with about 3000 commits since version 5.0.
32 The FusionForge team would like to dedicate this release to the memory
33 of Alexandre Neymann, who passed away in March 2011. Alexandre was
34 one of the founding members of the FusionForge project in 2009, and
35 one of its most active developers. His death has meant a great loss
38 On the user interface front, the project summary pages and users'
39 personal pages are now built out of blocks called "widgets" that can
40 be rearranged at will; these widgets (taken from Codendi) allow
41 greater flexibility on how the pages look. A new theme, called Funky,
42 is now available, with a more modern feel (contributed by Capgemini).
43 In the same field, the old help window has been replaced with a new
44 unobtrusive tooltip system (Alcatel-Lucent). A less visible aspect is
45 that the generated webpages are now much closer to full XHTML
48 Among the improvements in features, the document manager has been
49 vastly rewritten (by Capgemini again), with more features and an
50 improved usability; more improvements are planned for the next
51 release, but this should bring the docman to something we're no longer
54 Many improvements in the trackers have been contributed (by
55 Alcatel-Lucent), including a progress bar and improvements in sorting.
57 The permissions system has been enhanced and made more flexible, with
58 the new ability to have several roles at once in the same project and
59 to share roles across projects (contributed by Roland Mas as part of
62 New projects can now cloned from one of a set of configurable
63 templates, thus allowing forges to have standard shapes for their
64 common project organizations (Roland Mas, Coclico).
66 New plugins have been written or merged from Codendi as part of the
67 Coclico project: Mailman, Forumml, Hudson and SoapAdmin. Not all are
68 production-ready yet, but they're made available for the adventurous.
69 Other new plugins include a gravatar plugin (Alain Peyrat) and a
70 "blocks" plugin allowing to add free descriptions in several places
73 Behind the scenes, the configuration system has also been made
74 simpler, it now uses standard *.ini files that are taken into account
75 immediately; the Apache configuration files are also splitted out into
76 independent components, rather than a large generated file. (Both by
79 Another improvement making installation easier is the availability
80 packages in RPM format for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and CentOS, in
81 addition to the *.deb packages for Debian-based distributions.
82 Installation from source is still supported, of course.
84 As usual, this release provides scripts to migrate what needs to be
85 migrated to the new schemes (in this case, for the database schema,
86 the configuration variables and the existing permissions). Care
87 should still be taken to check the results of these migrations, as a
90 Release notes for FusionForge 5.0
91 ---------------------------------
93 FusionForge 5.0 is still an incremental step over 4.8, but many
94 changes have been made, some of which may require caution when
97 In particular, the rewriting of the version control subsystem created
98 the possibility for many new VCS tools to be integrated, and indeed
99 several new plugins were implemented (Arch, Bazaar, Darcs, Git and
100 Mercurial). To avoid crowding the chroot, all repositories are now
101 hosted under a two-level subdirectory structure. For instance, where
102 you had a CVS repositories stored under
103 /var/lib/gforge/chroot/cvsroot/<project>, you'll now have it under
104 .../chroot/scmrepos/cvs/<project>. As a consequence, you need to move
105 the repositories by hand and/or add symlinks. Previously existing
106 symlinks will also have to be updated, as well as previously existing
107 working copies obtained by users.
109 Also, the Mediawiki plugin was rewritten to allow for each project to
110 get their own independent wiki. The wiki for project foo-bar is now
111 stored in the plugin_mediakiki_foo_bar in the same database as the
112 rest of the forge. This means the data should be migrated from the
113 existing database to this new location. Depending on your setup and
114 the amount of data involved, it might make sense to either cut and
115 paste by hand or dump the tables and reload them in the new schema.
117 On the internal side of things, access to the database has been
118 converted from the db_query() abstraction layer to the
119 db_query_params() one. This means SQL queries are no longer built as
120 strings with unwieldy and fragile escaping code, while ensuring no
121 data coming from the user can be used for SQL injection attacks. The
122 db_query() function, while deprecated, is still present for the
123 benefit of out-of-tree code that might use it. It might be removed at
124 some point in the future, so maintainers of local plugins or
125 enhancements are encouraged to migrate their code to
126 db_query_params(). For really complex queries that need to be built
127 dynamically, there's also a db_query_qpa() abstraction, with a
128 db_construct_qpa() method to manipulate "QPA" (query+params array)
131 On a more visible note, the default theme has been reworked to
132 increase the accessibility of the web pages; this rewrite also brings
133 better maintainability, easier customisation by CSS and more
137 Release notes for FusionForge 4.8
138 ---------------------------------
140 FusionForge 4.8 is an incremental step from 4.7, and the changes are
141 less far-reaching than the ones in 4.7. Most notably, they include:
142 - A new project classification system based on tags (with a tag cloud).
143 - A new reporting page on the FRS displaying the number of downloads
145 - The “Project List” can now display a list of all projects.
146 - The “wiki” plugin now uses the latest PHPwiki code.
148 The upgrade from 4.7 should be straightforward.
151 Release notes for FusionForge 4.7
152 ---------------------------------
154 This is the first public release of FusionForge. FusionForge is based
155 on GForge, and started as an identical copy, with only a name change
156 to avoid confusion with the proprietary versions of GForge (known as
157 GForge Advanced Server or GForge AS). As such, it benefits from
158 mature code and known-good infrastructure, and builds on it for the
161 This 4.7 release is focused on bringing the recent evolutions out to
162 the community in an official stable release. This should provide a
163 solid base as a starting point for community-based development, making
164 it easier for enhancements to be maintained. The FusionForge name was
165 chosen to reflect this: this is a community effort, and we hope to
166 hear about your improvements. Contributing these improvements would
167 make their future long-term maintenance easier for everyone.
169 Major changes since previous versions (of GForge) include:
171 - Support for PostgreSQL 8.x.
172 - Translations are now managed by gettext.
173 - Support for several configurations running on the same code.
174 - Improved security, no need for PHP register_globals.
175 - Available as full install CD.
176 - New wiki plugins (using MediaWiki or phpWiki).
177 - New online_help plugin.
178 - New phpwebcalendar plugin.
179 - New project hierarchy plugin.
181 Things to keep in mind when installing:
182 - FusionForge is based on GForge, and the renaming is quite recent.
183 So the code still contains lots of references to GForge. This will
184 be fixed as time passes.
185 - Full text search using the primitives provided by PostgreSQL 8.3
186 isn't quite complete yet.
187 - Not all plugins are packaged for all distributions yet.
189 Things to keep in mind when upgrading:
190 - Since internationalisation was changed from a hand-made system to
191 standard gettext, locally customised translations will no longer
192 override standard ones. This will be addressed in a future release.
194 For more up-to-date information, please visit http://fusionforge.org/
195 or http://fusionforge.fusionforge.org/ -- you can even join us on IRC
198 -- The FusionForge development team