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0.8.<> Release

This release did not happen yet.

Please update this file within PRs accordingly. For non-trivial changes, you can choose to be part of the highlighted changes. Please make sure to add some short tutorial, asciinema, or how-to-use for highlighted items.

Please add your name to every contribution syntax: ", thanks to ".

<<scripts/generate-news-entry>>

We are proud to release Elektra 0.8.<>.

<<scripts/git-release-stats 0.8.VERSION>>

What is Elektra?

Elektra serves as a universal and secure framework to access configuration settings in a global, hierarchical key database. For more information, visit https://libelektra.org.

For a small demo see here:

asciicast

You can also read the news on our website

You can also read the FOSDEM interview given recently.

Highlights

  • New Logo and Website Theme
  • INI as new default configuration file format
  • Bindings for Asynchronous I/O
  • Plugin Processes
  • Lookup with the Order Preserving Minimal Perfect Hash Map
  • <>

New Logo and Website Theme

We are proud to present our new logo. It has a new shape and cooler colors.

Elektra

Thanks to Philipp Frei

We also gave the website a new look. It has the colors from the logo and new fonts (Lato and Libre Franklin) that improve readability and add to a unique look. The restructured start page contributes to the new look as well.

INI as new Default Configuration File Format

As promised in the previous release notes we switched to INI as default format. The migration will be smoothly: The dini plugin makes sure that old dump files are still being read. Only when writing out configuration files, configuration files are converted to INI.

TODO: write a bit about INI syntax+short guide

Bindings for Asynchronous I/O

New bindings for asynchronous I/O called "I/O bindings" have been added. These bindings allow Elektra's plugins and other parts to perform asynchronous operations.

I/O bindings are opt-in for application developers. New features of Elektra that take advantage of I/O bindings will have fallbacks where viable. These fallbacks will use synchronous I/O thus keeping the status quo. For example we plan to add a notification system that facilitates I/O bindings. Plugins that send notifications will have synchronous fallbacks while receiving plugins are asynchronous only.

For more details see the preview tutorial doc/tutorials/notifications.md

This release includes an experimental I/O binding for uv. The interface for I/O bindings is currently experimental.

Plugin Processes

A new library called pluginprocess has been added. This library contains functions that aid in executing plugins in a separate process. This child process is forked from Elektra's main process each time such plugin is used and gets closed again afterwards. It uses a simple communication protocol based on a KeySet that gets serialized through a pipe via the dump plugin to orchestrate the processes.

Such a behavior this is useful for plugins which cause memory leaks to be isolated in an own process. Furthermore this is useful for runtimes or libraries that cannot be reinitialized in the same process after they have been used.

Lookup with the Order Preserving Minimal Perfect Hash Map

The ksLookup (...) has a new search algorithm, that acts as an alternative to the binary search. The Order Preserving Minimal Perfect Hash Map (OPMPHM) is a non-dynamic, randomized hash map and is very effective for mostly static configurations. The OPMPHM can be enabled for a search by passing the in kdbproposal.h defined option KDB_O_OPMPHM to the lookup. Be aware that if the KeySet changes often using the OPMPHM might not be a good idea, read more about the OPMPHM.

When you are not sure if the OPMPHM will speed up you searches, wait for the next release, that one will include a hybrid search algorithm that combines the best properties of both search algorithms.

<>

Other New Features

We added even more functionality, which could not make it to the highlights:

  • Elektra is now part of the official Homebrew repository. We still provide a tap, if you want to install Elektra together with plugins or bindings that require additional libraries.
  • The building and linking of the haskell bindings and haskell plugins has been greatly improved.
  • The invoke library can now report errors upon opening/closing a plugin.
  • The YAML CPP plugin does not require Boost anymore, if you installed yaml-cpp 0.6.

Documentation

We improved the documentation in the following ways:

Compatibility

As always, the ABI and API of kdb.h is fully compatible, i.e. programs compiled against an older 0.8 version of Elektra will continue to work (ABI) and you will be able to recompile programs without errors (API).

Furthermore:

  • Added public headerfiles kdbio.h, kdbiotest.h.
  • Added private headerfiles kdbioprivate.h.

Portability

  • Fix bash shebang of bash scripts, thanks to Jakub Jirutka
  • Remove unportable unneeded asm, thanks to Timo Teräs and Jakub Jirutka

Notes for Maintainer

These notes are of interest for people maintaining packages of Elektra:

  • dini is no longer experimental.
  • BINDINGS syntax is now similar to PLUGINS. By default now all MAINTAINED bindings except EXPERIMENTAL and DEPRECATED are included. For more details see /doc/COMPILE.md. To include both intercept bindings, you now need to write INTERCEPT, to only include getenv interception intercept_env. intercept alone does not work anymore.
  • <>

The following files are new:

  • Libs: libelektra-io.so, libelektra-io-uv.so
  • :

Notes for Elektra's Developers

These notes are of interest for people developing Elektra:

  • <>

Testing

  • We added a crash test for the INI plugin that feeds the plugin with problematic input data we determined using AFL

Fixes

Many problems were resolved with the following fixes:

Outlook

We are currently working on following topics:

  • <>

Get It!

You can download the release from here or GitHub

The hashsums are:

<<scripts/generate-hashsums>>

The release tarball is also available signed by me using GnuPG from here or GitHub

Already built API-Docu can be found online or GitHub.

Stay tuned!

Subscribe to the RSS feed to always get the release notifications.

For any questions and comments, please contact the issue tracker on GitHub or me by email using elektra@markus-raab.org.

Permalink to this NEWS entry

For more information, see https://libelektra.org

Best regards, Elektra Initiative