tl;dr: EvolvisForge 4.8.3+25 with Permalinks and unique IDs for Task and Tracker items, automatic links for RFC conformant hrefs and [#123] style texts in comments and commits, better Task manipulation, improved Mediawiki integration and SOAP functionality, automatic mailing lists and greylisting, better debugging and less PHP and XHTML errors has been released.

And again, with a plethora of bugfixes, improvements and new features, EvolvisForge 4.8.3+evolvis25 was released and deployed. Read on for more details!

The probably most amazing things have been done in the Tasks and Tracker areas again. You can now write “[#123]” in a Task or Tracker comment, and it will automatically be converted into a link to the respective task/tracker item IFF the latter was created today or later (to be exact, while EvolvisForge 4.8.3+evolvis25 or later was installed); this stipulation is valid for all such references. When you write “[#123]” in an SVN commit message, the same applies in both directions — links to the task/tracker item from SCM → ViewVC (web-based Subversion browser) and links to the changeset from the task/tracker item as Related Commit (similar to how Related Tasks work). Similar to the t_follow.php based Permalinks for Tasks, Trackers now also have permalinks that are displayed. In both Tasks and Tracker, the ID column in the subproject browse view links to them for easy grabbing. The browse views also have configurable paging for logged-in users now, the setting of which is stored as a global preference.

In task/tracker item comments (as well as the initial comment, named “detailed description”), hyperlinks are made “clickable” automatically as well, using RFC-compliant matching (i.e. http://foo/möp is not a valid link — to be exact, it’ll link to http://foo/m — but http://foo/m%C3%B6p is).

It is now possible to change the “percent complete” column of Tasks in a bulk update. The Copy+Closed functionality now works almost correctly (a minor detail for better tarent-Activity usability will be changed later). The comments are now displayed in chronological order, instead of antichronological, for better human readability.

The state and percent complete of linked tasks are shown in the detail view of a Tracker item (bug, feature request, …), and related tasks can be unlinked there as well, instead of just in the tasks’ detail view.

The search now ignores double quotes and searches for the combination of all words by default.

The MediaWiki plugin sees Interwiki capability: the Interwiki table is global (per-forge) instead of per-wiki and filled with all præficēs automatically, using the Project’s unix name. It can also be edited with the new Special:Interwiki MediaWiki extension. The mw-wrapper.php script works correctly again, and nightly XML dumps of every Wiki are available, for example for backups. It is now possible to use both English (File:foo.jpg, #REDIRECT, Special:Weird) and German (Datei:foo.jpg, #WEITERLEITUNG, Spezial:Seltsam) syntax in the Wikis. Pages like Login/Logout, Create Account and Lost Password, that have no value in the MediaWiki plugin, redirect to the Forge’s equivalent functionality.

The SOAP WSDL now compiles cleanly and sees a few bugfixes as well as a new API “addUploadedFile” which works with the File Release System and manual (SFTP) uploads, to facilitate automatic deployment, e.g. from a Hudson running Maven.

The Document Manager has received some fixes and the ability to use manual (SFTP) upload like the FRS.

All projects will have a -commits and a -discuss mailing list; all members with SCM commit access will be added to the former, all proect members no matter what to the latter automatically upon joining the project (you can, of course, unsubscribe). Postings to the -commits list bear the -discuss list as followup. The Postfix MTA will be configured to use Postgrey for greylisting to reduce spam income.

There’s now a suggestion list for project tags. In most places where a history was kept (project, task, tracker), not only the old but also the new value are stored and shown now, and the sort order has been reversed to chronological as well.

EvolvisForge will now work better with Python 2.6 and PHP 5.3 on Debian unstable, although Debian Lenny (with backports) is still the only supported platform; *.deb files are available on request, we’ll allow others to install EvolvisForge and related software by and for themselves now (although most of the functionality is supposed to be achievable by using FusionForge, our upstream Open Source project). (In fact, in between writing this Release Announcement for the Evolvis Project and formatting it for the Blog, Roland Mas has begun merging improvements into FusionForge trunk. Nevertheless, contact evolvistodo {klammeraffe} tarent {punkt} de if you want to set up an EvolvisForge instance yourself. Remember that Evolvis is more than just the Forge, it’s also Wikis (now included in the Forge though), Blogs, Planet, Continuous Integration (soon to be integrated in the Forge), Domisol, and more.)

Some minor things have been fixed too, for example, there was a tremendous effort to fix all PHP warnings found and make all pages XHTML 1.0/Transitional compliant (if one isn’t, it can now be considered a bug), which led to the redesign of some pages, such as the Task “Select Columns” facility and the project Admin page. Wrong output, texts and translations in some places have been fixed. Developers of EvolvisForge now have better help in debugging: the “pink pop-up” can display calls to db_query{,_params} and backtraces when PHP warnings/errors occur. The licence information of a project will not be shown, as it currently cannot be set (we’re working on that). Several theme issues have been corrected, and to Mozilla™ Firefox® users (and users of other Gecko-based browsers), fields’ elements will now appear white-on-black by default with black-on-white (instead of white-on-blue) for selected items, due to a bug in that browser series. And, of course, the bugfixes from our upstream, FusionForge, have been merged when applicable as well.

The complete changelog and our MediaWiki Plugin demonstration page are still available for your convenience.

We wish you a pleasant experience using the new, improved EvolvisForge, as well as the rest of our Evolvis platform! -- The Evolvis team

PS: Sorry for the very long posting, but I’ve already tried to go down on detail and only mention the important things, mostly from a user’s PoV, and condensed… it’s just a lot happened and some co-workers are really excited about those features yet.