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0.7.0

Finally it is done, the 0.7.0 API is finished.
The API covers everything shown in kdb.h and all
releases in 0.7.0 will be 100% ABI and API compatible
supported for at least a year.
Of course except for the bugs, but there should not be
many any more, because every method is at least checked
twice and most have hundred of test cases.

There will be a separate release for libelektratools,
backend interface which will be supported from that
moment on.

kdb-tool and kdbedit and so will also have separate
releases, but because they are not a library there
is no API or ABI issue there.

Download it from:
(sourceforge?)
http://www.markus-raab.org/ftp/elektra-0.7.0svn.tar.gz
ftp://www.markus-raab.org/elektra-0.7.0svn.tar.gz







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0.7.0rc5 The last release candidate before 0.7.0

I am proud to present the finished  0.7.0 external API in
kdb.h [0].

A lot changed to 0.6.10 but the fundamentals are clearer then
ever before: 3 Classes with their methods, a clear, easy and
mature API. It is very hard to use it wrong but you get
best results with very short code:

http://www.libelektra.org/Tutorial

Other parts are not finished, like libelektratools, the
kdb-tool and the backend interface. They are not part of
the official 0.7 release and get their own release later.

The reasons to release within the next week are:
 - The API is finished
 - Oyranos needs a stable release from elektra
 - the last release is long ago
 - unstable has been much more stable than stable since some time
 - there have been no commits to the stable branch since
   unstable existed
 - Elektra grows just too complex to wait for all parts to finish

Now some highlights from one month of work from 333 ChangeLog
lines:
 - many many bugs were fixed
 - the core completely compiles with -ansi -pedantic -std=c99
 - all code compiles with -Wall -Werror
 - the test-suite is now complete
 - much cleaner infrastructure within the code
 - many autoconf/automake issues fixed
 - static, dynamic building, linking with defaults backends
   everything works!
 - many new options to stat and remove all keys and so on..
 - environment variables and passwd database allow subtle
   influence of where the user configuration resides
 - kdb info now prints where configuration lies on hard disc




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0.7.0rc4 - 12.05.2008
I am proud to present the fourth release candidate of elektra
0.7.0.

It is now possible to enable and disable Backends and Bindings
with configure switches. The documentation was improved.
The c++ binding now basically works, see the tests for examples.
Ini and Berkleydb backends now compile again.
There were a lot of bug fixes, like mntent.h fix for Mac OS X.




---------------




0.7.0rc3 - 24.04.2008
Call for 0.7 finish

Unfortunately there is not much response about the 0.7 release
candidates but there is still a lot to do to have a mature
library worth to be announced as stable.

Specifically there are following things to do and we really need
help to achieve that faster than end of this year:

There are now only 3 backends working well tested but undistinguished
in handling error scenarios. At least 3 more Backends are needed
also tested in real world applications. Favoured are existing but
not ported backends like berkleydb, ini, winregistry and uniconf.

Working bindings have a lot meaning in how complete and useful
the API is. It would be preferable to have at least 3 bindings
working with at least an example application like kdb-tool.
They could be cpp, python and one open.

A lot of bug squashing is left open. Please don't hesitate to open
and fix more bugs on http://bugs.libelektra.org.

Documentation is not yet completely updated to 0.7. Especially the
homepage has a lot of outdated information, but also the API documentation
needs another eye on it and the tutorial needs a rewrite.

There might be some licencing issues in some parts of elektra,
everything should be BSD, if you find something please open a bug.

A partial blocker is the kdb-tool, where a rewrite would be nice but
is not necessary for 0.7 (the library counts not the environment).

Other things like portability are taken seriously but are not blockers,
they can be fixed later too.

What is really good working in elektra is the infrastructure like
svn, homepage, bug tracking, many thanks to José Luis Tallón for
that!

Now some words about 0.7.0rc3:

Version macros were added to have static information about
the elektra version compiled against. There were many
enhancements in the C++ Binding, the Key Class is now
quite well complete.

While writing the C++ binding I realized that there is need
for keyInc() the opposite of keyDel() to increase the
viability of a key object.

keyVNew() and ksVNew() were added to make it possible to pass
the va_list from the C++ binding.

The blocker bug that libelektra assumes system/elektra/mountpoints
to exist was solved, many thanks to Patrick Sabin. The tests
now work without any preloading without memory leaks.

And lots of bug fixes (Many thanks to Kai-Uwe Behrmann):
- sed changed for macosx compatibility
- fixed signature ssize_t ksToStream
- also set CXXFlags
- fix wrong parent at end in ksToStream
- fix return value of successful kdb import
- string is default type for xml without type=""
- fix extra_dist some missing files
- remove , at end of enumeration lists

The svn id is unstable@1352:
https://svn.libelektra.org/svn/elektra/unstable/

The release candidate is available under:
http://www.markus-raab.org/ftp/elektra-0.7.0rc3.tar.gz



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0.7.0rc2 - 23.03.2008
Second Release Candidate of unstable repository.

We proudly present the second release candidate for Elektra 0.7.0. Many
bugs were fixed, kdbGet() and kdbSet() is now really stable, useful and
well documentated. test_kdb also tests hosts and fstab next to filesys
with 6598 test cases.

kdbSet() now supports a parent key to only set a part of the
configuration passed by the keyset, allowing to e.g. save system and
user configuration seperately. It only calls kdbSet_backend() when it
is actually necessary. The splitting works much more efficient with n*b
instead of n^2*b.

The highlevel functions kdbGetKey() and kdbSetKey() now work well with
Capabilities. This allows very easy changing of keys inside backends
even with some lacking capabilities, see GetStartedMounting.

Patrick Sabin and I wrote our bachelor thesis about mounting backends for
configuration. It gives a detailed introduction in problem and choices
and the actual implementation.
See: doc/elektra.pdf doc/elektra.ps.gz





---------------




0.7.0rc1 - 06.12.2007
First Release Candidate of unstable repository.
= Large Changes =

== Multiple Backends ==

Elektra now supports multiple backends at once. That means every path
like user/sw or system/filesystems can reside in a different backend.

Use cases for backend mounting: 1. There are many configurationfiles lying
on every system that can't be replaced for various reasons. These files
can be fade in into the global elektra namespace without any notice by
applications using these files. Backends for /etc/fstab, /etc/mtab and
/etc/passwd exist right now.

2. Users or administrators might get used by ordained files or syntax
without wanting to change the whole configuration using elektra. The
mounting technique allows them to choose.

3. Specific programs may have very complex and large configuration. Binary
files with index may give them a fairly better performance without
missing the connection to the global namespace.

4. Configuration provided by network or local daemons for notification
and caching can't be used for every program. Configuration related to
bootup or some system users need to be available without them, but should
also be accessed by applications needing configuration from network.

If you are not convinced - Its just about choice and you can go on using
only one backend.

See http://www.libelektra.org/Backends what is and might be possible.

== kdbOpen(), kdbClose(), kdbGet() and kdbSet() ==

These 4 core functions do now everything related to backend
communication. All the other functions are build upon it. This makes
backend writing much easier. Removing and Stat works by setting a flag
in a key.

KDB * is now a typedef for the _KDB structure and not a
void* pointer.

== Keyset ==

Starting with ksNew you can give a hint how large the keyset may grow. You
can also give a list of keys which should be added at startup.

ksGenerate() makes use out of that and generates you a keyset in C-Code
which you can use in your applications or for regression testing.

The internal structure of keyset is now a growing (and shrinking)
array. Keys may belong to multiple keysets now. The last ksDel() deletes
the key automatically (reference counter).

This implementation is a lot faster, the benchmark is for 0.7.0rc1 better
then for 0.6.*, even though the mounting logic takes a bit of performance,
but very little and something about zero when no backend is mounted.

== Key ==

The key now uses sizes for name, owner, value and comment. This allows a
complete new technique of serializing: keyCompose(). With that you can
serialize a key without a single malloc(). keySerialize() is rewritten
for the new key struct too.

== Access Types ==

The directory is now marked by the executable flags. That means you can
disallow other users or groups to list your keys.

== Capabilites ==

Some backends fullfill the whole specification of kdbGet_template() and
kdbSet_template() and can be used by any program for any purpose. Other
backends have principle limitations and do not fullfill the specification,
but can do more than enough to be useful.

To handle this problem we created a data structure describing what
capabilites a backend does not have. With that technique you can use the
testing framework from early steps developing the backend on. To do so,
just declare your backend can do nothing and delete step by step while
your backend evolves.

== Testing framework ==

There is now a large testing framework with 11 collections with up to
8128 tests each. Most conditions of the whole sourcecode are checked,
that means if you random change something in the code you have a good
chance that a test case will fail.

There are 2 new flags:
 --enable-valgrind-tests
   Allows you to enable valgrind for testing, a full list of memory
   leaks is printed after every test.
 --enable-gcov
   Use it to see what lines of code are covered by tests.

The testcases are without any memory leak (dozens of leaks are fixed,
especially in xml code).


0.6.10 - 10.03.2007 Elektra received some stability updated from Patrice
Dumas.

0.6.6 - 21.12.2006 support for directories with values and comments on
filesys, berkeleydb and daemon backends.

0.6.4 - 08.09.2006 Tons of improvements and standarizations to the build
system from Patrice Dumas and Yannick.  Many improvements to the daemon
backend from Yannick.  Several other bug fixes.  We are getting closer
to a production daemon.


0.6.2 - 02.06.2006 - Includes more robust key name handling and
intelligent duplicate "/" removal - Escaping of "/" on key names is
now supported - Better automatic UTF-8 conversions - More tunnings for
better future daemon backend support - More robust berkeleydb backend -
Backends are now installed on /lib/elektra/ - The build system was tunned
to be included as a Fedora Extras package


0.6.0 - 30.03.2006 Public release of the new API.  Check it out in SF.