Friendica v2020.09-1 Release Notes

Release Date: 2020-09-24 // over 3 years ago
  • 🚑 During the RC phase of the 2020.09 release of Friendica a problem during sending out notification mails was not observed by the testers, but only reported after the release. Therefore we release now the 2020.09-1 hotfix release which will re-enable those mails.

    ⚡️ How to Update

    ⚡️ Updating from old Friendica versions

    🚀 If you are updating from an older version than the 2020.03 release, please first update your Friendica instance to that version.

    ⚡️ Pre-Update Procedures

    🚀 Ensure that the last backup of your Friendica installation was done recently. We had no problems reported during the upgrade process from 2020.07 to the 2020.09 release candidate, so hopefully you will have a smooth transition.

    ⚡️ Please make sure to use Barracuda as MySQL DB file format for your Friendica database. Change your database settings before you proceed with the Friendica update. This change will take some time depending on the size of your database.

    Using Git

    Important : We are removing the master branch and are using the stable branch instead.

    ⚡️ Updating from the git repositories should only involve a pull from the Friendica core repository and addons repository, regardless of the branch (stable or develop) you are using. Remember to update the dependencies with composer as well.

    cd friendica
    git fetch
    git checkout BRANCH
    bin/composer.phar install --no-dev
    cd addon
    git fetch
    git checkout BRANCH
    

    🚀 Pulling in the dependencies with composer will show some deprecation warning, we will be working on that in the upcoming release.

    Using the Archive Files

    💻 If you had downloaded the source files in an archive file (tar.gz) please download the current version of the archive (friendica-full-2020.09-1.tar.gz and friendica-addons 2020.09-1.tar.gz) and unpack it on your local computer.

    🆕 As many files got deleted or moved around, please upload the unpacked files to a new directory on your server (say friendica_new) and copy over your existing configuration (config/local.config.php and config/addon.config.php) and .htaccess files. Afterwards rename your current Friendica directory (e.g. friendica) to friendica_old and friendica_new to friendica.

    The files of the dependencies are included in the archive (make sure you are using the friendica-full-2020.09 archive), so you don’t have to worry about them.

    ⚡️ Post Update Tasks

    ⚡️ The database update should be applied automatically, but sometimes it gets stuck. If you encounter this, please initiate the DB update manually from the command line by running the script

    bin/console dbstructure update
    

    from the base of your Friendica installation. If the output contains any error message, please let us know using the channels mentioned below.

    Please note , that some of the changes to the database structure will take some time to be applied, depending on the size of your Friendica database.

    Known Issues

    👀 If you are using lighttpd to serve your Friendica node the boolean AND operator for the full text search seems not to be working at the moment.

    How to Contribute

    👷 If you want to contribute to the project, you don’t need to have coding experience. There are a number of tasks listed in the issue tracker with the label “Junior Jobs” we think are good for new contributors. But you are by no means limited to these – if you find a solution to a problem (even a new one) please make a pull request at github or let us know in the development forum.

    📚 Contribution to Friendica is also not limited to coding. Any contribution to the documentation, the translation or advertisement materials is welcome or reporting a problem. You don’t need to deal with Git(Hub) or Transifex if you don’t like to. Just get in touch with us and we will get the materials to the appropriate places.

    🚀 Thanks everyone who helped making this release possible and have fun!