What’s New in Roundup 0.8 &mdash; Roundup v1.4 documentation

# Roundup

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# What’s New in Roundup 0.8

For those completely new to Roundup, you might want to look over the very terse features page.

Contents

- What’s New in Roundup 0.8
  - In Summary
  - Performance improvements
  - Logging of internal messages
  - Security Changes
    - Password Storage
    - Permission Definitions
  - Extending Roundup
  - 8-bit character set support in Web interface
  - Web Interface Miscellanea

## In Summary

(this information copied directly from the `CHANGES.txt` file)

XXX this section needs more detail

- create a new RDBMS cursor after committing
- roundup-admin reindex command may now work on single items or classes
- roundup-server options -g and -u accept both ids and names (sf bug 983769)
- roundup-server now has a configuration file (-C option)
- roundup windows service may be installed with command line options recognized by roundup-server (but not tracker specification arguments). Use this to specify server configuration file for the service.
- added option to turn off registration confirmation via email (“instant_registration” in config) (sf rfe 922209)

## Performance improvements

We don’t try to import all backends in backends.__init__ unless we want to.

Roundup may now use the Apache mod_python interface (see installation.txt) which is much faster than the standard cgi-bin and a little faster than roundup-server.

There is now an experimental multi-thread server which should allow faster concurrent access.

In the hyperdb, a few other speedups were implemented, such as:

- record journaltag lookup (“fixes” sf bug 998140)
- unless in debug mode, keep a single persistent connection through a single web or mailgw request.
- remove “manual” locking of sqlite database

## Logging of internal messages

Roundup’s previously ad-hoc logging of events has been cleaned up and is now configured in a single place in the tracker configuration file.

The customization documentation has more details on how this is configured.

roundup-mailgw now logs fatal exceptions rather than mailing them to admin.

## Security Changes

`security.addPermissionToRole()` has been extended to allow skipping the separate getPermission call.

### Password Storage

Added MD5 scheme for password hiding. This extends the existing SHA and crypt methods and is useful if you have an existing MD5 password database.

### Permission Definitions

Permissions may now be defined on a per-property basis, allowing access to only specific properties on items.

Permissions may also have code attached which is executed to check whether the Permission is valid for the current user and item.

Permissions are now automatically checked when information is rendered through the web. This includes:

1. View checks for properties when being rendered via the `plain()` or similar methods. If the check fails, the text “[hidden]” will be displayed.
2. Edit checks for properties when the edit field is being rendered via the `field()` or similar methods. If the check fails, the property will be rendered via the `plain()` method (see point 1. for additional checking performed)
3. View checks are performed in index pages for each item being displayed such that if the user does not have permission, the row is not rendered.

## Extending Roundup

To write extension code for Roundup you place a file in the tracker home `extensions` directory. See the `customisation documentation`_ for more information about how this is done.

## 8-bit character set support in Web interface

This is used to override the UTF-8 default. It may be overridden in both forms and a browser cookie.

- In forms, use the `@charset` variable.
- To use the cookie override, have the `roundup_charset` cookie set.

In both cases, the value is a valid charset name (eg. `utf-8` or `kio8-r`).

Inside Roundup, all strings are stored and processed in utf-8. Unfortunately, some older browsers do not work properly with utf-8-encoded pages (e.g. Netscape Navigator 4 displays wrong characters in form fields). This version allows to change the character set for http transfers. To do so, you may add the following code to your `page.html` template:

    <tal:block define="uri string:${request/base}${request/env/PATH_INFO}">
     <a tal:attributes="href python:request.indexargs_url(uri,
      {'@charset':'utf-8'})">utf-8</a>
     <a tal:attributes="href python:request.indexargs_url(uri,
      {'@charset':'koi8-r'})">koi8-r</a>
    </tal:block>

(substitute `koi8-r` with the appropriate charset for your language). Charset preference is kept in the browser cookie `roundup_charset`.

`meta http-equiv` lines added to the tracker templates in version 0.6.0 should be changed to include actual character set name:

    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type"
     tal:attributes="content string:text/html;; charset=${request/client/charset}"
    />

Actual charset is also sent in the http header.

## Web Interface Miscellanea

The web interface has seen some changes:

Editing

Templating

  We implement __nonzero__ for HTMLProperty - properties may now be used in boolean conditions (eg `tal:condition="issue/nosy"` will be false if the nosy list is empty).

  We added a default argument to the DateHTMLProperty.field method, and an optional Interval (string or object) to the DateHTMLProperty.now

  We’ve added a multiple selection Link/Multilink search field macro to the default classic page.html template.

  We relaxed hyperlinking in web interface (accept “issue123” or “Issue 123”)

  The listing popup may be used in query forms.

Standard templates

  We hide “(list)” popup links when issue is only viewable

  The issue search page now has fields to allow no sorting / grouping of the results.

  The default page.html template now has a search box in the top right corner which performs a full-text search of issues. The “show issue” quick jump form in the sidebar has had its font size reduced to use less space.

Web server
  The builtin web server may now perform HTTP Basic Authentication by itself.

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