En/Release Notes/0.9.0

Home » Wiki » En » Release Notes » 0.9.0

Released: 11 December 2007

This is a stable release of Mahara 0.9 Accio. Stable releases are fit for general use. If you find a bug, please report it to the tracker:

https://eduforge.org/tracker/?func=add&group_id=176&atid=739

Please choose '0.9 stable branch' as the version of your bug.

This release includes an upgrade path from 0.8. If you wish to upgrade, we encourage you to make a copy of your 0.8 website and test the upgrade on it first, to minimise the effect of any potential unforseen problems.

Major points to note:

  • License change - Mahara has moved to the GPL version 3
  • You cannot upgrade from a version before 0.8 - instead, upgrade to 0.8 first
  • If you're using MySQL, change your database type from 'mysql' to 'mysql5' in your config.php if you're upgrading from 0.8, or use mysql5 if you're installing from scratch. The old 'mysql' version is deprecated and will cause errors in Mahara in the future
  • The debian packaging has been fixed to not rule over its apache config file, and has had many changes made to it by Francois Marier in order to get it into debian
  • There are two new required configuration variables - imagemaxwidth and imagemaxheight. If you're upgrading, they will be set in the database, both to 1024 (pixels). The upgrade will clear your current image cache as the folder layout on disk has changed, but this is a good thing as the quality of image resizing has been improved quite a lot
  • The "Allow Public Views" setting in the administration used to do nothing. Now it works, so make sure that if you want to make views public, you turn it on.
  • When upgrading from 0.8, existing views in the system will be migrated to the new view format, with the following caveats:
    • Any views using custom template not included in 0.8 are deleted
    • Any views using the 'test' template are deletd
    • The migration is not perfect, but most information should be retained

This release includes:

  • Menu structure re-organisation - now it should be easier for users to understand how parts of the system are grouped.
  • Image upload improvements - they're resized to have better quality and you can upload bigger files than before
  • The new views framework. This is a great new way to create views, and allows you to include not just your files, blogs, resume details and profile information, but also video, RSS and more! The system is pluggable so developers can create new things for people to put in views
  • You can move files between folders with drag and drop in the files section
  • Groups are gone, nobody knew what they were anyway. Communities have been renamed to groups, and there's a new 'My Friends' page that makes it easier to find and see your friends
  • The admin user search page has been greatly improved, and now administrators can see all users when searching for them in the admin section, rather than just those who have filled in public profile fields

As mentioned before, when upgrading from 0.8, please attempt it on a copy of your site first, to test that you will enjoy a trouble-free upgrade.