Habari Project

Habari 0.8 released

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:28:19 +0000

We're pleased to announce the release of Habari 0.8, our first release from Github. There have been many improvements and bug fixes in this release. Major changes include:

support for child themes
improved security

Habari's original default theme, k2, no longer ships as part of core, but can be found in habari-extras. The 0.9 release will include a responsive theme designed to be extended by child themes. For more details, read the complete release notes, and make sure to see the upgrade instructions if you're already using Habari. We thank the growing Habari community for the usage, coding, translation, and creation of the best Habari yet. Please download Habari 0.8. Many thanks again to our friend Mauro Gentile (alias sneak), who has done a great job helping secure Habari.

Feature freeze for Habari 0.8

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 21:48:28 +0000

The release of Habari version 0.8 is coming very soon. To prepare for it, we're feature freezing to shift the focus from adding new functionality over to finding bugs and fixing other problems. Over the last several months the Habari Project has seen many changes, from changing the source code repository to several changes in the API, so there's a lot to check out. You can download a zip file or install it from Github. The release notes are a work in progress on the wiki page. As with all releases, please help out by reporting any bugs you find and stop by the mailing list or jump on IRC if you have any questions or problems!

Code sprint weekend

Thu, 14 Jul 2011 11:16:37 +0000

To celebrate our move to Github, we're having a code sprint! What does that mean? In this case, it means, we all hang out on IRC, try to close as many of our issues as possible, make sure everyone is comfortable with the git workflow, and ensure that our git documentation makes sense. So join us next weekend, 16 and 17 July, to let's kick some kitako.

Habari boards the Github train

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 01:41:04 +0000

We're happy to announce that the Habari project has migrated source control and issues ticketing to Github. Of course, this means we're now using git for source control and bidding farewell to subversion. We're also bidding farewell to Trac (and putting it in a little boat and on the river and setting it on fire). The details of our repositories and how to get set up are on the wiki. They're a work in progress, so let us know what sucks about them (or improve them!).

Why we moved to git

There are things that git does better than subversion. Some of those things are:

in place branching; no need for a ton of different branches and checkouts, all your Habari work can happen in the same place,
simpler sharing of in-progress work with forks and branches (though the word 'fork' is used in a different sense in git than in the history of open source),
being able to stash changes; save your changes into any number of "stashes" so you can quickly pull in new changes, make more edits, and then merge your changes back in,
submodules are more powerful than svn externals; they check out a specific commit, not just the current revision (though they're tricker to handle than externals, for just this reason).

And there are things that subversion does better than git, despite what the fans tell you. In the end, git is source control software that does things with a bit of different syntax, and we probably wouldn't have moved if it wasn't for Github.

Why we're moving to Github

Github makes it incredibly easy for developers to contribute, and for us to pull in their contributions, and many potential developers already have Github accounts. Of course making it easy to contribute to the Habari project is very attractive. Additionally, some of our best and brightest have spent countless hours trying to get Trac to work well for us. Any time any of us spends fighting with (restarting, troubleshooting, updating, etc) Trac is time that would be better spent making Habari better, and we can offload that responsibility and maintenance onto Github. So we're moving to Github because:

there's a vibrant and active developer community on Github,
pull requests allow Github users to easily supply changes that can be tested and, importantly, reviewed, commented on, and improved,
pull requests are easier to manage than patches, and patches are still possible using the ticket system and diffs; here is an example of a pull request using the Dark Autumn Habari theme,
no Trac-hosting resource-devouring headaches,
the potential for greater visibility of the Habari project through the Github community,
more powerful code review tools, with commit-level and line-level commenting.

To celebrate the move, and get the community familiar with how things will work now we're on Github, we're having a code sprint on the weekend of July 16, details in a forthcoming post.

Habari 0.7.1

Thu, 12 May 2011 20:11:24 +0000

Not much more than a month after we released 0.7, we've already packaged up a minor update to it. There are no security fixes, but we recommend you upgrade to gain the following:

A bugfix for login issues related to certain browsers and PHP sessions.
Improved support for viewing images in multiple silos.
AutoP no longer formats HTML script tags.
Improvements to the tag display template (in Mzingi and Charcoal).

For more details, and links to the actual commits, see the 0.7.1 release notes on the wiki. Thanks to all in the Habari Community for help with identifying issues and testing.

Habari 0.7 Released!

Fri, 01 Apr 2011 19:19:50 +0000

It's been a long road, but Habari 0.7 is finally seeing public release. Over the past two years Habari has had more than 1400 bug fixes and enhancements applied to it. Major areas of improvement include:

Blocks. When a theme defines an area for them, blocks added by the theme and plugins can be displayed, configured, and rearranged without the theme user needing to edit any theme files. The theme configuration page has been enhanced to make adding such content a matter of click, drag, and drop.
Taxonomy. Scary word, we know, but the functionality it enables is fantastic. Using the proper plugins, users now can easily create new types of content on their site, use almost any type of menu structure, including nested posts and pages, or create vocabularies only they can imagine. Habari's built-in tagging system has been rewritten to build on the taxonomy structure, and many plugins already exist for other kinds of content.
Installation. Habari's Installer has been much improved, making it easier than ever to install Habari.
I18n. More translations are distributed with Habari, including major European languages and Russian. These have been created by the community, for the community.

For more details, read the complete release notes, and make sure to see the upgrade instructions if you're already using Habari. Many thanks go to the Habari community for the usage, coding, translation, and creation of this fine piece of work. But now, download Habari 0.7. Update: Mauro Gentile (alias sneak), who reported the security issue mentioned in the final release candidate post and worked with us to fix it, has written an extended description of the vulnerability and the fix. Thanks Mauro!.

Call for Translators

Wed, 30 Mar 2011 19:39:59 +0000

One of the things we've worked hard on with Habari is to make it usable in multiple native languages. There is still a great deal of work to do to make Habari fully translatable, especially in the Javascript and access control sections, but with each release we get a little closer to reaching the goal. This post is a request for help on two fronts for the release of Habari 0.7. First, as with all of Habari, translations rely on volunteers. Launchpad is used to maintain all of Habari's translations. With a Launchpad account, any user is welcome, and invited, to help make Habari fully usable in any language. We now how have at least the beginnings of translations for nearly 40 languages. Of these, Italian and German are as complete for Habari 0.7 as they can be. Spanish, Russian, French, and Traditional Chinese are all very close. Any assistance completing these translations would be appreciated. Second, right now Habari is distributed with translations for Traditional Chinese, German, Danish, and Japanese. Every release we go back and forth about which translations to distribute with Habari. This time around we would like the input of you, the Habari user, as to which translations should be distributed with Habari. Go ahead and leave your suggestions in the commments. Things to keep in mind when making your suggestions are:

Completeness is good. A barely begun translation won't do the user much good.
Habari download size. We try to keep the size of the Habari download as small as possible. Thus, while we do want to include other languages beside English, we can't include every language possible.

This isn't to say the other translations won't be available to you. Periodically, all translation files are downloaded from Launchpad and put in our Habari-Extras Locales repository, where they are available for download. Once downloaded, they can be uploaded to your Habari installations locales folder, where they will detected and ready for use by Habari.

The Final Countdown: 0.7 Release Candidate 3

Wed, 30 Mar 2011 04:00:24 +0000

It's been a hectic month, with almost 100 changes made since the second release candidate, but we're confident that this will be the final release candidate. Habari 0.7 will be fully baked soon! The most important change in this release is the tightening up of how we parse URLs in input data, to protect from XSS attacks that rely on manipulated link schemes. Details of the changes made since Release Candidate 2 can be found in the 0.7-rc3 release notes. Full details on the changes since the 0.6 release can be found in the main 0.7 release notes. You can download a zip file or check out the tag directly from Subversion. As with all releases, please help out by reporting any bugs you find and stop by the mailing list or jump on IRC if you've got any questions or problems.

That Was Quick! 0.7 Release Candidate 2

Fri, 25 Feb 2011 06:19:28 +0000

Quickly on the heels of our first release candidate we're happy to announce that Habari 0.7 Release Candidate 2 is now available. RC2 includes some important security updates for the 0.7 series as well as bug fixes and enhancements. Anyone using a Developer Preview or earlier Release Candidate build is encouraged to upgrade as soon as possible. Details on the issues addressed in this release can be found in the 0.7-rc2 release notes. Full details on the changes since the 0.6 release can be found in the main 0.7 release notes. You can download a zip file or check out the tag directly from Subversion! As with all releases, please help out by reporting any bugs you find and stop by the mailing list or jump on IRC if you've got any questions or problems!

Finally: Habari 0.7 Release Candidate 1!

Thu, 24 Feb 2011 01:24:42 +0000

The last Habari 0.7 developer preview was in December, 2010. With help from you and everyone who worked with the developer previews, more lingering issues have been discovered and fixed. As a result, a couple of weeks ago, February 13, Habari 0.7 went into feature freeze. At this point, with few issues being reported, we are happy to present Habari 0.7 RC1. Anyone using a Developer Preview is encouraged to upgrade as soon as possible, especially if you are using it on a live site. For a complete list of changes in this release since Habari 0.6, please see the release notes. As always, upgrade instructions are available. You can download a zip file or check out the tag directly from Subversion! As with all releases, please help out by reporting any bugs you find and stop by the mailing list or jump on IRC if you've got any questions or problems!