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 milestone release brings an upgrade to Java 8 runtime, improvements to Extension Manager and Flavors, and a new Tips panel that replaces the old Quick Links panel. 

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:

Active Installs

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

Tips Panel

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

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. 

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:

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.

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.

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.

Miscellaneous

• The xwiki.usedefaultweb parameter from xwiki.cfg has been removed. See below.
• 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.

  

• 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

Deferred JavaScript Module Dependency Loading

You can extend a feature provided by some JavaScript module without knowing where that module is loaded from (by RequireJS) with the following code:

This basically says to RequireJS: "let me know when this module is loaded by someone else" (someone else being an other script on the same page). You can read more about this on the Developer's Guide.

Upgrades

The following dependencies have been upgraded:

• JSqlParser 0.9.5
• slf4j 1.7.20
• Jackson 2.7.3
• XStream 1.4.9
• GWT 2.7
• jQuery 2.2.2
• RequireJS 2.2
• Infinispan 8.2.0
• logback 1.1.7

Miscellaneous

• IRC Bot Application has been moved to XWiki Contrib under the new extension id of org.xwiki.contrib:application-ircbot-ui
• Selenium Application had been moved to XWiki Contrib under the new extension id of org.xwiki.contrib:application-selenium
• FAQ Application has been moved to XWiki Contrib under the new extension id of org.xwiki.contrib:application-faq-ui
• The XAR plugin now also verifies that Translation pages are using the plain/1.0 syntax (it checks pages having a Translation xobject in them).
• This Methods Arguments Velocity Uberspector now supports calling varargs methods.
• Starting With XWiki 8.1M1, the backward-compatibility tool we use is Revapi. We had to move away from CLIRR since it didn't support Java 8 constructs.

Translations

The following translations have been updated: 

• Catalan
• Portuguese (Brazil)

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

Here is the list of databases we support and how they have been tested for this release:

	Database	Test Result
	HyperSQL	Not Tested
	MySQL	Not Tested
	Oracle	Not Tested
	PostgreSQL 9.5.1	Jira Tickets Marked as Fixed in the Release Notes

Known issues

• Bugs we know about

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 8.1-milestone-1

• The xwiki.usedefaultweb parameter has been removed from xwii.cfg. This parameter had not been working since XWiki 7.2-milestone-1; when we introduced Nested Pages we had to make a choice and we decided to support addressing top-level Nested Pages without having to have WebHome in the URL (nor having to finish URLs with a trailing /). For example, http://<server>/xwiki/bin/view/something points to something.WebHome by default since XWiki 7.2-milestone-1.
• Since we've modified content of the Quick Links Panel, the Distribution Wizard may detect a merge conflict if this panel was customized. In addition, the Quick Links panel may disappear after an upgrade to 8.1M1+. You can add it back from the administration UI if you want to keep it (e.g. if it has been customized).

API Breakages

The following APIs were modified since XWiki 8.0:

• ? return type makes signature more complex for nothing
  • Violation type: java.method.returnTypeTypeParametersChanged
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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()
• Default constructor was removed by error (our Revapi check wasn't working and failed to break the build at the time) and has been put back in XWiki 8.1M2
  • Violation type: java.method.numberOfParametersChanged
  • Old: method void org.xwiki.rendering.wikimodel.xhtml.filter.XHTMLWhitespaceXMLFilter::<init>()
  • New: method void org.xwiki.rendering.wikimodel.xhtml.filter.XHTMLWhitespaceXMLFilter::<init>(org.xml.sax.XMLReader)
• Default constructor was removed by error (our Revapi check wasn't working and failed to break the build at the time) and has been put back in XWiki 8.1M2
  • Violation type: java.method.removed
  • Old: method void org.xwiki.rendering.wikimodel.xhtml.filter.XHTMLWhitespaceXMLFilter::<init>(org.xml.sax.XMLReader)