Djblets 0.10 Beta 1 Release Notes¶

Installation¶

To install this release, run the following:

$ sudo pip install \
    --trusted-host downloads.reviewboard.org \
    -f http://downloads.reviewboard.org/releases/Djblets/0.10/ \
    --pre -U Djblets

Or:

$ sudo easy_install \
    -f http://downloads.reviewboard.org/releases/Djblets/0.10/ \
    -U Djblets

We do not recommend upgrading a production server with this version of Djblets. This version is still in-development, and is not guaranteed to have API stability.

Compatibility Changes¶

• Added initial support for Django 1.7 and higher.

  We’re working toward supporting all versions of Django 1.6 and up. We expect to ship full support for these versions by the final Djblets 0.10 release. For now, we still recommend Django 1.6 for greatest compatibility.

• Updated to django-pipeline 1.6.x.

  This release uses django-pipeline 1.6.x, which requires various changes in your application. Specifically, you’ll need to change your settings.py file to use the new PIPELINE attribute, and update your templates to use stylesheet and javascript instead of compressed_css and compressed_js.

  See django-pipeline’s upgrade guide for more details.

Style Sheets¶

• Modernized the look of literal text and code blocks in Markdown rendered text.

  The text is shown as red with a red border and light grey background, resembling the look used on Slack and other services.

  Code blocks have improved margins and padding to help align the rendered text with the source text.

djblets.auth¶

• The account registration view can now take extra context for the template.

  register() now accepts an extra_context argument for passing custom data down to the template for rendering.

djblets.avatars (new)¶

• Added support for configurable avatars.

  This introduces new support for avatar display using Gravatars, uploaded files, URLs, or custom backends.

  Avatars can be customized on a global or per-user basis.

  See Avatar Services Guides for information on avatars.

djblets.cache¶

• Added a class for synchronizing generation IDs across processes and servers.

  GenerationSynchronizer can be used to synchronize a form of identification across multiple processes or servers, helping to coordinate when state needs to be reloaded from disk, database, another server, etc. When state changes, the caller just needs to mark the synchronizer as updated on their end, and other processes will see the state as expired on their end.

djblets.conditions (new)¶

• Added support for user-customizable condition rules.

  Conditions are a way to allow applications to give users a degree of flexibility for choosing when certain actions should take place. Users can define one or more conditions, consisting of a choice (a properly on an object to match upon in some form), an operator (“is”, “starts with”, etc.), and a value (depending on the type of choice and operator), along with whether all or any conditions must be matched.

  These can be used for extension or integration development, or for anything else needed by the application. There are form fields to drop conditions onto a page, and lots of support for crafting types of condition choices and operators.

  See djblets.conditions for more information.

djblets.configforms¶

• Added support for dynamically-augmented configuration pages.

  Configuration pages inheriting from DynamicConfigPageMixin can be augmented by other callers (such as extensions). This makes use of the new registries support.

• Custom configuration pages can now pass extra context to the template.

  Subclasses can override ConfigPageForm.get_extra_context to return extra context that the templates for the page or a form within the page can use, allowing for data to be computed before rendering the template.

djblets.db¶

• Added custom object serialization for JSONField.

  Objects being stored can now handle their own serialization by implementing a to_json() method.

  There is no support for custom deserialization into objects.

• Added a method for prefixing query expressions.

  prefix_q() is used to provide a prefix to all Q objects for a query. This can be used to create a common query expression and to allow a caller to tailor it for a relation on another object.

djblets.extensions¶

• Simplified writing extension hooks.

  ExtensionHook subclasses can now override initialize() instead of __init__() to perform setup work for a hook. These don’t need to call the parent method, and are simpler to use.

• Add proper support for dynamically enabling/disabling extension hooks.

  Extension hooks can now be safely disabled by calling disable_hook() and re-enabled by calling enable_hook(). The current state can be checked by looking at hook_state or initialized.

  Extension hook instances can also be created without being enabled by default by passing start_enabled=True when instantiating.

• Added a convenience method for getting the URL for an extension’s static media.

  The new get_static_url() returns the URL for a given static media file shipped by the extension.

• Added a base extension hook for hooks that work with registries.

  BaseRegistryHook can be subclassed by applications to easily provide hooks that interface with registries, handling registration when enabled or unregistration when disabled.

• Improved database synchronization and static media installation for extensions in multi-deployment setups.

  We previously kept a version identifier stored in the extension settings to help determine when static media needed to be installed, but this didn’t work so well for multi-deployment setups. We also used this to determine when to perform a database synchronization.

  Now both of these requirements are stored separately, and media installation will happen automatically as needed. This will also help when moving a Review Board installation to a new server.

• Failing to load an uninstalled extension now shows an appropriate error message.

djblets.features (new)¶

• Added support for light-weight feature checks.

  Feature checks (also known as feature switches/toggles) are a way to allow new features to be built and tested in a codebase without exposing them to every user.

  The feature check support in Djblets is built to make feature checks easy to use and flexible to consume. Applications can implement feature checker classes that determine how a feature is checked. These can check a hard-coded list of features in settings.py, a list in the site configuration, a list against a user or an organization account, or anything else the application needs.

  See Feature Checks Guides for more information.

djblets.forms¶

• Added a new form base class for storing key/value data in a dictionary or dictionary-like object.

  KeyValueForm makes it easy to load data from a dictionary and save it back to the dictionary. It supports advanced features like disabling certain fields from being edited, setting text describing why the fields are disabled, and blacklisting certain fields from being loaded from or written to the dictionary.

  Subclasses can override this and provide smarter load/save support or adapt the form to work with other types of objects that don’t act exactly like a dictionary.

• Added form fields for working with conditions.

• Added a new base template for customizable administration change forms.

  The djblets_forms/admin/change_form_page.html template makes it easier to have an administration page for a change form, without using the Django admin model functionality. This forms the basis for extension configuration and siteconfig settings pages and supports all standard features (fieldsets, help text, custom widgets, and more).

  Along with this, there’s a djblets_forms/admin/form_field.html template for form fields that live in the change form, and djblets_forms/admin/form_fieldsets.html for fieldsets.

djblets.integrations (new)¶

• Added new support for creating and consuming third-party service integrations.

  Integrations are similar to extensions in that they can augment a product with new functionality. Unlike extensions, they have built-in support for creating and using any number of distinct configurations, allowing, for instance, a Slack integration to post to different channels depending on different conditions.

  Integrations can make use of extension hooks, just like an extension. Integrations and their hooks are not enabled until there’s at least one enabled configuration for the integration.

  See Integration Guides for information on writing and consuming integrations.

djblets.recaptcha (new)¶

• Added a module for working with reCAPTCHA.

  This provides easy support for using reCAPTCHA. Forms can make use of the RecaptchaFormMixin to display and process a reCAPTCHA. There are also widgets, template tags, and siteconfig support, which can be used as well.

  See reCAPTCHA Guides for more information.

djblets.registries (new)¶

• Added registries, which are used to register and look up objects.

  Registries are classes that provide registration, lookup, iteration, validation, and error reporting for a type of value. These can be used to provide extensibility for parts of an application. Consumers can subclass the base registry class (Registry) to provide registry functionality, and then create an instance in a module for callers to use.

  The OrderedRegistry subclass can be used when items in a registry need to maintain their order when listed.

  The EntryPointRegistry subclass can be used for registries that are backed by Python Entrypoints, helping bring extensibility to applications already allowing hooks from other Python packages.

  See Registries Guides to learn more.

djblets.pipeline¶

• Added a django-pipeline compiler for compiling *.es6.js files as ES6 JavaScript.

  The ES6Compiler can be used to match *.es6.js files and compile them as ES6 JavaScript. This can be used by adding djblets.pipeline.compilers.es6.ES6Compiler to settings.PIPELINE['COMPILERS'].

• Added a more efficient LessCSS compiler that only recompiles when necessary.

  The LessCompiler is an improvement over the default compiler that better inspects dependencies and recompiles files when there are actual changes, rather than recompiling on every page load.

  This can be used by adding djblets.pipeline.compilers.less.LessCompiler to settings.PIPELINE['COMPILERS'].

djblets.util.decorators¶

• Deprecated basictag().

  Django’s simple_tag() now provides all the same functionality that basictag provided.

djblets.util.templatetags¶

• Added a template tag for iterating over fieldsets in a form.

  The get_fieldsets() template tag can be used to iterate over all fieldsets on a form, helping to craft custom templates for building more advanced forms.

djblets.webapi¶

• Resources can now specify the title of serialized links.

  By default, link titles are always based on the string representation of the object. Now, resources can override get_object_title() to provide a custom title.

• Uploading files to an API no longer returns a text/plain mimetype.

  This used to be sent in order to meet a requirement in older versions of Review Board, but this is no longer the case. The proper mimetype for the resource is now returned.

Contributors¶

• Beth Rennie

• Christian Hammond

• David Trowbridge

• John Larmie