Bugzilla 4.4 and 4.2.6 released

(cross-posted from LpSolit’s Blog)

We released Bugzilla 4.4 and 4.2.6 today. Bugzilla 4.2.6 is a bugfix release, and contains no security fixes. It adds support for MySQL 5.6 and fixes a crash with Oracle.

Bugzilla 4.4 contains many new features:

• The searching system has been improved: it allows multiple search criteria to match one field; it has improved support for flags; it has better performance, especially with complex queries.
• The tagging system has been redesigned: the old tagging fields in the page footer are gone in favor of a Tags field in the bug itself. Tags remain private and are only visible by you. They can also be used in queries as any other field.
• Bugzilla can now correctly identify uploaded attachments which have a MIME type of application/octet-stream.
• You can now save tabular and graphical reports as you already do with saved searches. Previously, you had to bookmark them in your web browser.
• You can customize columns displayed in whinemails.
• As usual, the WebServices have been improved with several new methods.
• The security has been improved, such as using HMAC SHA-256 to generate tokens instead of MD5.
• etc ….

This release also means the End Of Life (EOL) of Bugzilla 3.6, which was the last series for Bugzilla 3.x. This branch is no longer supported, and any new security bug found on this branch will remain unfixed. Installations still running Bugzilla 2.x or 3.x are urged to upgrade to Bugzilla 4.4 or 4.2.6.

So, what’s next? Well, the main focus for Bugzilla 5.0 will be usability and user experience. Bugzilla sometimes (often?) looks old-fashioned because we wanted to support old browsers and browsers with JavaScript disabled. But we decided to move to a more interactive interface where JavaScript will help accomplish some tasks with less page reloads, such as submitting changes to a bug or adding an attachment. We also plan to add a new skin to Bugzilla which should look like this. Some pages will also be entirely redesigned, such as the Group Controls page to administrate access to bugs which was considered too complex for the average admin. More information will come with the release of development snapshots.

Bugzilla 4.4rc2 and 4.2.5 released (and also 4.0.10 and 3.6.13)

(mirrored from LpSolit’s Blog)

So, Bugzilla 4.4rc2 is finally here! It took us more time than expected, but the performance bugs are all fixed and we also fixed two security bugs which are described in the security advisory. Bugzilla 4.2.5, 4.0.10 and 3.6.13 also contain these two security fixes, so you should definitely upgrade.

Compared to 4.4rc1, the new release candidate contains the last feature which we wanted for 4.4: the ability to add several criteria in a query against the same field. In Bugzilla 4.2,

"Flags changed to approval+" AND "Flags changed by foo@bar.com"

were disconnected, which means that these criteria would match all bugs which had the approval+ flag set and which had a flag changed by foo@bar.com. In Bugzilla 4.4, you can now force these two criteria to match the same field, i.e. that you only want bugs where the approval+ flag has been set by foo@bar.com. Thanks to Byron Jones (glob) for this great feature. Of course, this feature is not limited to flags, but works with all fields. See the release notes for more details. Also, 4.4rc2 should in most cases be much faster than 4.2 to run some complex queries. In my testing, some queries which took several minutes to complete now run in a few (tens of) seconds only. This is especially noticable with many columns displayed in the buglist. Another good reason to test it!

The next release should be 4.4 final as I don’t think a 4.4rc3 is needed.

Upgrading your Bugzilla? Don’t forget to Sanity Check first.

When planning on upgrading your Bugzilla to a newer version, it’s always a good idea to read the release notes in case of special instructions that need to be done to handle certain situations in upgrades.  Our checksetup.pl script has gotten pretty good at handling a lot of situations automatically for you these days, but nothing is ever perfect.

One instruction in the upgrade procedure for every release that often gets overlooked is to run the Sanity Check function from the Admin page on your Bugzilla site before upgrading.  It checks the integrity of the data in your database and will alert you to a number of possible problems with your data.  Sometimes bugs in Bugzilla or even people manually messing with the database will cause something to not be how Bugzilla expects it, and every so often one of these problems can cause issues for an upgrade.  Fixing any problems reported by Sanity Check before each upgrade can save you a lot of headaches.

In a recent example: newer versions of Bugzilla allow you to edit the available statuses and resolutions on bugs.  Older versions didn’t.  One of the steps performed by the upgrade script is to examine your database, take whatever current statuses you’ve been using (even if you hacked your Bugzilla to allow different ones before we actually let you customize them), and convert them to the way the new customizable ones are stored.  The new custom status system has a flag to distinguish between statuses that are allowed to have resolutions and those that aren’t.  When upgrading, it decides whether to set that flag on a status or not by looking in your database to see if there are any bugs with that status that have resolutions on them.  If it finds any, the status is set up to use them.

A long time ago there was Bug 107229 which caused duplicate bugs to get the wrong status if you midaired while marking it a duplicate.  This caused bugs to exist in an “ASSIGNED DUPLICATE” state that should have been “RESOLVED DUPLICATE”.  A side effect is if it was left that way, when you later upgraded to a version of Bugzilla that included the custom statuses, your ASSIGNED status became a “closed” type instead of an “open” one, and would require a resolution.  Sanity Check most likely would have caught this, as it checks for things like resolutions where there shouldn’t be any.

Release of Bugzilla 4.4rc1, 4.2.4, 4.0.9, and 3.6.12

Today we have several new releases for you!

All of today’s releases contain security fixes. We recommend that all Bugzilla administrators read the Security Advisory that was published along with these releases.

Bugzilla 4.4rc1 is our first Release Candidate for Bugzilla 4.4. This release has received QA testing, and should be considerably more stable than the development releases before it. It is still not considered fully stable, and so you should understand that if you use it, you use it at your own risk.

If feedback from this release candidate indicates that it is mostly stable, then Bugzilla 4.4 will be released in a few weeks. If feedback indicates that more extensive fixes are needed, there may be another release candidate after this one.

• Download 4.4rc1
• Release Notes for 4.4rc1

Bugzilla 4.2.4 is our latest stable release. It contains various useful bug fixes and security improvements:

• Download 4.2.4
• Release Notes for 4.2.4

Bugzilla 4.0.9 is a security update for the 4.0 branch:

• Download 4.0.9
• Release Notes for 4.0.9

Bugzilla 3.6.12 is a security update for the 3.6 branch:

• Download 3.6.12
• Release Notes for 3.6.12

Release of Bugzilla 4.3.3, 4.2.3, 4.0.8, and 3.6.11

Today we have several new releases for you!

All of today’s releases contain security fixes. We recommend that all Bugzilla administrators read the Security Advisory that was published along with these releases.

Bugzilla 4.2.3 is our latest stable release. It contains various useful bug fixes and security improvements:

• Download 4.2.3
• Release Notes for 4.2.3

Bugzilla 4.0.8 is a security update for the 4.0 branch:

• Download 4.0.8
• Release Notes for 4.0.8

Bugzilla 3.6.11 is a security update for the 3.6 branch:

• Download 3.6.11
• Release Notes for 3.6.11

Bugzilla 4.3.3 is an unstable development release. This release has not received QA testing from the Bugzilla Project, and should not be used in production environments. Development releases exist as previews of the features that the next major release of Bugzilla will contain. They also exist for testing purposes, to collect bug reports and feedback, so if you find a bug in this development release (or you don’t like how some feature works) please tell us.

• Download 4.3.3

Release of Bugzilla 4.3.2, 4.2.2, 4.0.7, and 3.6.10

Today we have several new releases for you!

All of today’s releases contain security fixes. We recommend that all Bugzilla administrators read the Security Advisory that was published along with these releases.

Bugzilla 4.2.2 is our latest stable release. It contains various useful bug fixes and security improvements:

• Download 4.2.2
• Release Notes for 4.2.2

Bugzilla 4.0.7 is a security update for the 4.0 branch:

• Download 4.0.7
• Release Notes for 4.0.7

Bugzilla 3.6.10 is a security update for the 3.6 branch:

• Download 3.6.10
• Release Notes for 3.6.10

Bugzilla 4.3.2 is an unstable development release. This release has not received QA testing from the Bugzilla Project, and should not be used in production
environments. Development releases exist as previews of the features that the next major release of Bugzilla will contain. They also exist for testing purposes, to collect bug reports and feedback, so if you find
a bug in this development release (or you don’t like how some feature works) please tell us.

• Download 4.3.2

Release of Bugzilla 4.2rc2, 4.0.4, 3.6.8, and 3.4.14

Today we are announcing the second Release Candidate for Bugzilla 4.2, in addition to one new stable release and two security-only updates for the 3.4.x and 3.6.x series.

Bugzilla 4.2rc2 is our second Release Candidate for Bugzilla 4.2. This release has received QA testing, and should be considerably more stable than the development releases before it. It is still not considered fully stable, and so you should understand that if you use it, you use it at your own risk. This will most likely be the last release candidate before 4.2 final.

Bugzilla 4.0.4 is our latest stable release. It contains various useful bug fixes and security improvements for the 4.0 branch.

Bugzilla 3.6.8 and 3.4.14 are security updates for the 3.6 branch and the 3.4 branch, respectively.

All the gory details and download links and the security advisory are available on our website.

Get Involved

As always, we love new contributors in every area. There are a lot of ways to contribute to Bugzilla–you don’t just have to be a programmer. In particular, we’d really love to have somebody to be in charge of our documentation. If you know anybody who’s a great documenter (including yourself!) who wants to help out an open-source project, please send them our way!