MySource Matrix Developer

MySource Matrix Developer Newsletter Issue 139
Friday 10th August 2007

covers versions 3.12.7 stable, 3.14.3 stable, 3.16.0 RC1, 3.17.0 development

News

Three New MySource Matrix Releases

Two new stable releases of MySource Matrix were released last Monday. Version 3.14.3 is the latest release on the 3.14.x (current stable) branch, fixing 13 bugs. Version 3.12.7 is the latest release on the 3.12.x (old stable) branch, fixing 11 bugs. Both versions also contain a change to LDAP Bridge; the password field is now ignored when a blank Bind DN is used - allowing easier switching to and from anonymous binding. Users of earlier versions of MySource Matrix are encouraged to upgrade to these latest versions.

Also, the first release candidate of 3.16 branch of MySource Matrix, a.k.a. version 3.16.0 RC1, was released on Monday. This release offers almost 50 new features and improvements to MySource Matrix. This release is provided for evaluation of the new features of the 3.16 branch only; no support is provided for upgrading from earlier versions to the release candidate. A full upgrade guide will be compiled and made available upon the stable release of 3.16.0.

The next scheduled release of MySource Matrix is on Monday, 3rd September, when the first stable release of 3.16.0, along with stable releases of 3.14.4 and 3.12.8, will be made available to the public. Please note that 3.12.8 will be the last supported version on the 3.12.x branch, and users are strongly encouraged to move to the 3.14.x or 3.16.x branch if possible.

MySource Matrix to Support PHP5: January 2008

PHP recently announced that they will stop supporting PHP 4 in August 2008; consequently Squiz will convert MySource Matrix to work with PHP 5. Squiz have committed to making the 3.18 release of MySource Matrix, scheduled for release in January 2008, compatible with PHP 5.1.

MySource Matrix currently requires PHP 4 and Squiz have been reluctant to change that requirement to PHP 5 because the changes will not be backward compatible. In other words, it is not possible to make a version of MySource Matrix that works on PHP 4 and PHP 5. For those unfamiliar with PHP versions, there was a fundamental change in the way PHP operates between version 4 and 5 which means for the first time in PHP%u2019s life some components are not backwards compatible. This is not just an issue for MySource itself; it is also a problem for some of the PEAR libraries MySource relies on and supporting applications such as our unit-testing framework.

In order to support clients using Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (RHEL 5), Squiz will ensure MySource Matrix 3.18 only uses features available in PHP 5.1 (RHEL 5 only supports PHP 5.1). This policy will be reviewed on announcement of a release date for RHEL 6.

New Features

HIPO Locking Improvements

Added to: 3.17.0 development

Some HIPO Jobs used to lock every asset being affected by the HIPO before performing an action on it - including such editing functions as metadata and workflow schemas, tags, permissions and roles. This posed a problem for large - or potentially even moderate - numbers of assets being affected, as some locks may have already expired by the time the action is performed, causing it to fail.

Now, for the above HIPO Jobs, each asset will be locked, actioned upon, and then released in turn, eliminating the chance of this to occur.

Renaming of Multiple Page Pages

Added to: 3.17.0 development

Multiple Page Page assets can now have their web-path be edited to a value different from their page position (eg. "1", "2", etc). If these new web-paths are non-numeric, they will not be renamed again when the pages are next re-ordered.

Planned Development

No new generic features are currently scheduled for development.

Upgrading

New Bugs Added To Bug Tracker

Notes:

Bug #2561 ("Select Field does not show scroll bar", reported by Deborah Sherwood on August 3rd) was marked as Not a Bug. Multiple developers were unable to reproduce the reported bug, which saw the vertical scroll bar disappear when a field height of 2 was used. It is suspected that the actual issue may relate to the window manager and/or browser not being able to display a full scroll-bar on a select field that small.

Bug #2562 ("Default value on the select metadata field not changing height", reported by Deborah Sherwood on August 3rd) was marked as Not a Bug. The bug report suggested that a Metadata Select field would not respect a field height of 1 (which would normally turn it into a drop-down field). In this case, Allow Multiple was turned on, and it does not make sense to allow a drop-down field where multiple options are able to be selected.

New Feature Requests Added To Bug Tracker

Bugs Fixed In The Bug Tracker

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