Release Notes for XWiki 8.3 Milestone 1
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.
This release brings mostly usability improvements:
- You now have the ability to export children pages along with the current one in XAR and HTML formats.
- Ratings and active install numbers are now displayed in the Livetable on the home page of the Extension Repository Application.
- You can easily use a color theme from the main wiki in other subwikis.
- New hints are displayed in the user profile preferences.
- Some page suggestions are displayed when you try to reach a page or an attachment that do not exist.
In addition, more than 35 bugs have been fixed!
New and Noteworthy (since XWiki 8.2)
Full list of issues fixed and Dashboard for 8.3.
For Users
XAR Children Export
It's now possible, for HTML and XAR formats, to export selected children along with the current page.
Children Macro
A new {{children/}} macro has been added to display a tree view of all children of the current page.
Active Installs for Extensions
The number of active installs is displayed for each extension in the Repository App's home page livetable and in the extension page.
Ratings on Extensions Repository home page
Rating is now displayed in the Repository App's home page livetable.
Not Found Suggestions
We have added suggestions for the "document not found" and "attachment not found" error screens. The suggestions address minor typos and misspelling (including lower case vs upper case), but also bad location requests.
User Profile Preference Hints
We have added documentation hints for User Profile Preferences so that it's more obvious to understand what each option means.
All Blog posts link
The Blog Category Panel now has an entry for All blog posts with a RSS feed for all.
Miscellaneous
The AutoSave feature is now available in the WYSIWYG edit mode.
For Admins
Global Color Themes
It's now possible, on a subwiki, to use a color theme coming from the main wiki (global themes).
Miscellaneous
Active installs client now send the memory used by the instance.
Debian packages now override standard configuration files handling for xwiki.cfg, xwiki.properties and web.xml to provide 3 ways merge with standard dpkg and apt command line tools.
For Developers
Velocity and ScriptContext synchronization
VelocityContext and ScriptContext are now fully in sync (and if you find a use case where it's not true create a BUG on https://jira.xwiki.org) and VelocityContext is now close to internal detail. This allows for example defining a variable in Velocity and accessing it from a Groovy script:
## Setting some script binding in Velocity
#set($myvar = "toto")
{{/velocity}}
{{groovy}}
// Lets use the script binding that has been set in previous script
print myvar
{{/groovy}}
Miscellaneous
It's now possible to customize a Maven repository in xwiki.properties with any Aether property. See XWiki Commons - Extension - Repository - Maven.
It's now possible to change the socket and connection timeouts of a XWiki Repository in xwiki.properties. See XWiki Commons - Extension - Repository - XWiki.
Two new specific extension points for providing recommendations in the Document/Attachment Not Found views:
Injected extension repositories can now be associated with a priority
Filter Stream annotations: Thanks to Java 8 now supporting getting method parameter names through reflection, it's not required anymore to use @Name annotation in the definition of a filter. See Filter Module for more details.
It's also possible to override the name of the event (which is by default extracted from the method name) using the @Name annotation.
Filter manager make sure to calculate the event descriptor based on the top most overridden method (usually coming from an interface). Various things were not always properly inherited (like event name or reflection based parameters names).
Two new generic extension points for the Document/Attachment Not Found views:
Moved Modules
- Cache module has been moved to XWiki Commons. This mostly means that you can now use it in commons and rendering modules. Nothing change in the classes or packages names, just need to update group id and artifact id in your build tool.
- Application Manager moved to Contrib (https://github.com/xwiki-contrib/xwiki-platform-application-manager), it can still be installed as extension if required
Upgrades
The following dependencies have been upgraded:
Translations
The following translations have been updated:
Tested Browsers & Databases
Here is the list of browsers we support and how they have been tested for this release:
| Browser | Test Result | |
|---|---|---|
 | Google Chrome | Not Tested |
 | Mozilla Firefox | Not Tested |
 | Internet Explorer 10 | Not Tested |
| Internet Explorer 11 | Jira Tickets Marked as Fixed in the Release Notes + New and Noteworthy Features |
Here is the list of databases we support and how they have been tested for this release:
| Database | Test Result | |
|---|---|---|
 | HyperSQL 2.3.4 | Jira Tickets Marked as Fixed in the Release Notes + New and Noteworthy Features |
 | MySQL 5.7.13 | Jira Tickets Marked as Fixed in the Release Notes + New and Noteworthy Features |
 | Oracle | Not Tested |
 | PostgreSQL | Not Tested |
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 8.3 Milestone 1
LDAP Module moved to Contrib
The module containing among other things the standard LDAP authenticator has been moved to http://github.com/xwiki-contrib/ldap and is not embedded anymore in XE. Starting with 8.3M1 you need to install it if you want to use it. See http://extensions.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Extension/LDAP/#H8.3.x for more details on what between the XWiki Platform module and the new Contrib Extension.
Cache module moved to XWiki Commons
The only thing that changed is the id of the modules. If you have any dependency on those you just need to change org.xwiki.platform:xwiki-platform-* to org.xwiki.commons:xwiki-commons-*
API Breakages
No API has been broken since XWiki 8.2.1!
Credits
The following people have contributed code to this release (sorted alphabetically):
- Alexandru Cotiuga
- Denis Gervalle
- Ecaterina Moraru (Valica)
- Eduard Moraru
- Guillaume Delhumeau
- Lukas Krejci
- Manuel Smeria
- Marius Dumitru Florea
- Sergiu Dumitriu
- Thomas Mortagne
- Vincent Massol
