« Changelog History


Zulip v3.0 Release Notes

Release Date: 2020-07-16 // almost 4 years ago

  • 3.0 -- July 16, 2020

    Highlights

    • ➕ Added support for Ubuntu 20.04 Focal. This release drops support
      for Ubuntu 16.04 Xenial and Debian 9 Stretch.
    • Redesigned the top navbar/search area to be much cleaner and show
      👉 useful data like subscriber counts and stream descriptions in
      0️⃣ default views.
    • ➕ Added a new "Recent Topics" widget, which lets one browse recent
      and ongoing conversations at a glance. We expect this widget to
      0️⃣ replace "All messages" as the default view in Zulip in the
      🚀 next major release.
    • Redesigned "Notification settings" to have an intuitive table
      0️⃣ format and display any individual streams with non-default settings.
    • ➕ Added support for moving topics between streams. This was by far
      Zulip's most-requested feature.
    • ➕ Added automatic theme detection using prefers-color-scheme.
    • ➕ Added support for GitLab and Sign in with Apple authentication.
    • ➕ Added an organization setting controlling who can use private messages.
    • ➕ Added support for default stream groups, which allow organizations
      to offer options of sets of streams when new users sign up.
      Currently can only be managed via the Zulip API.
    • The Zulip server now sets badge counts for the iOS mobile app.
    • Quote-and-reply now generates a handy link to the quoted message.
    • ⬆️ Upgraded Django from 1.11.x to the latest LTS series, 2.2.x.
    • ➕ Added integrations for ErrBit, Grafana, Thinkst Canary, and AlertManager.
    • 📚 Extended API documentation to have detailed data on most responses,
      validated against the API's actual implementation and against all
      ✅ tests in our extensive automated test suite.
    • ➕ Added support for programmable message retention policies, both a
      0️⃣ global/default policy and policies for specific streams.
    • ➕ Added a new incoming webhook API that accepts messages in the format
      👉 used by Slack's incoming webhooks API.
    • Introduced the Zulip API Feature Level, a concept that will greatly
      simplify the implementation of mobile, terminal, and desktop clients
      👍 that need to talk to a wide range of supported Zulip server
      🔖 versions, as well as the Zulip API changelog.
    • Our primary official domain is now zulip.com, not zulipchat.com.

    ⬆️ Upgrade notes for 3.0

    • ⬆️ Logged in users will be logged out during this one-time upgrade to
      transition them to more secure session cookies.
    • 🚀 This release contains dozens of database migrations, but we don't
      anticipate any of them being particularly expensive compared to
      🚀 those in past major releases.

    • Previous versions had a rare bug that made it possible to create two
      👉 user accounts with the same email address, preventing either from
      🚀 logging in. A migration in this release adds a database constraint
      that will fix this bug. The new migration will fail if any such
      duplicate accounts already exist; you can check whether this will
      happen be running the following in a management shell:

      from django.db.models.functions import Lower UserProfile.objects.all().annotate(email_lower=Lower("delivery_email")) .values('realm_id', 'email_lower').annotate(Count('id')).filter(id count gte=2)

    If the command returns any accounts, you need to address the
    ⬆️ duplicate accounts before upgrading. Zulip Cloud only had two
    accounts affected by this bug, so we expect the vast majority of
    installations will have none.

    • 🚀 This release switches Zulip to install Postgres 12 from the upstream
      0️⃣ postgres repository by default, rather than using the default
      Postgres version included with the operating system. Existing Zulip
      installations will continue to work with Postgres 10; this detail is
      🔧 configured in /etc/zulip/zulip.conf. We have no concrete plans to
      start requiring Postgres 12, though we do expect it to improve
      🐎 performance. Installations that would like to upgrade can follow
      ⬆️ [our new postgres upgrade guide][postgres upgrade].
    • The format of the JWT_AUTH_KEYS setting has changed to include an algorithms
      list: {"subdomain": "key"} becomes {"subdomain": {"key": "key", "algorithms": ["HS256"]}}.
    • ➕ Added a new Organization Owner permission above the previous
      Organization Administrator. All existing organization
      administrators are automatically converted into organization owners.
      Certain sensitive administrative settings are now only
      editable by Organization Owners.
    • The changelog now has a section that makes it easy to find the
      🚀 Upgrade notes for all releases one is upgrading across.

    Full feature changelog

    • ➕ Added new options in "Manage streams" to sort by stream activity or
      number of subscribers.
    • ➕ Added new options to control whether the incoming email integration
      prefers converting the plain text or HTML content of an email.
    • ➕ Added server support for creating an account from mobile/terminal apps.
    • The Zulip desktop apps now do social authentication (Google, GitHub,
      💻 etc.) via an external browser.
    • ➕ Added support for BigBlueButton as video chat provider.
    • ➕ Added support for setting an organization-wide default language for
      code blocks.
    • ➕ Added an API endpoint for fetching a single user.
    • ➕ Added built-in rate limiting for password authentication attempts.
    • ➕ Added data export/import support for organization logo and icon.
    • ➕ Added documentation for several more API endpoints.
    • ➕ Added new email address visibility option hiding real email
      ➕ addresses from organization administrators in the Zulip UI.
    • ➕ Added new "Mention time" markdown feature to communicate about times
      in a timezone-aware fashion.
    • ➕ Added new "Spoiler" markdown feature to hide text until interaction.
    • ➕ Added a new API that allows the mobile/desktop/terminal apps to
      💻 open uploaded files in an external browser that may not be logged in.
    • ➕ Added several database indexes that significantly improve
      🐎 performance of common queries.
    • ➕ Added an organization setting to disable the compose box video call feature.
    • ➕ Added a user setting to disable sharing one's presence information
      with other users.
    • ➕ Added support for IdP-initiated SSO in the SAML authentication backend.
    • ➕ Added new "messages sent over time" graph on /stats.
    • ➕ Added support for restricting SAML authentication to only some Zulip
      organizations.
    • ➕ Added List-Id header to outgoing emails for simpler client filtering.
    • 🔄 Changed how avatar URLs are sent to clients to dramatically improve
      🐎 network performance in organizations with 10,000s of user accounts.
    • Redesigned all of our avatar/image upload widgets to have a cleaner,
      simpler interface.
    • 👀 Normal users can now see invitations they sent via organization settings.
    • Rewrote the Zoom video call integration.
    • 💅 Polished numerous subtle elements of Zulip's visual design.
    • Dramatically improved the scalability of Zulip's server-to-client
      push system, improving throughput by a factor of ~4.
    • 👌 Improved handling of GitHub accounts with several email addresses.
    • 👌 Improved "Manage streams" UI to clearly identify personal settings
      and use pills for adding new subscribers.
    • 👌 Improved Sentry, Taiga, GitHub, GitLab, Semaphore, and many other integrations.
    • 👌 Improved "Muted topics" UI to show when a topic was muted.
    • 👌 Improved the UI for "Drafts" and "Message edit history" widgets.
    • 👌 Improved left sidebar popovers to clearly identify administrative actions.
    • Rewrote substantial parts of the Zulip installer to be more robust.
    • Replaced the chevron menu indicators in sidebars with vertical ellipses.
    • ✂ Removed the right sidebar "Group PMs" widget. It's functionality is
      available in the left sidebar "Private messages" widget.
    • ✂ Removed the Google Hangouts integration, due to Google's support for
      it being discontinued.
    • ✂ Removed a limitation on editing topics of messages more than a week old.
    • 👍 The Gitter data import tool now supports importing multiple Gitter
      rooms into a single Zulip organization.
    • Missed-message emails and various onboarding content are now tagged
      🌐 for translation.
    • Redesigned the notice about large numbers of unread messages to be
      👍 a banner (no longer a modal) and to use a better trigger.
    • Cleaned up dozens of irregularities in how the Zulip API formats
      data when returning it to clients.
    • Extended stream-level settings for who can post to a stream.
    • 👍 Extended GET /messages API to support a more intuitive way to
      ✅ request the first unread or latest message as the anchor.
    • Muted topics will now only appear behind "more topics".
    • 👌 Improved UI for picking which streams to invite new users to.
    • 👌 Improved UI for reviewing one's muted topics.
    • 👌 Improved UI for message edit history.
    • 🛠 Fixed many minor issues with Zulip's markdown processors.
    • 🛠 Fixed many subtle issues with the message editing UI.
    • 🛠 Fixed several subtle issues with the default nginx configuration.
    • 🛠 Fixed minor issues with various keyboard shortcuts.
    • 🛠 Fixed UI bugs with Zulip's image lightbox.
    • Specifying latex or text as the language for a code block now
      does LaTeX syntax highlighting (math remains the recommended code
      block language to render LaTeX syntax into display math).
    • 🛠 Fixed performance problems when adding subscribers in organizations
      with thousands of streams.
    • 🛠 Fixed performance issues with typeahead and presence in
      organizations with 10,000s of total users.
    • 🛠 Fixed guest users being added to the notifications stream
      unconditionally.
    • 🛠 Fixed inconsistencies in the APIs for fetching users and streams.
    • 🛠 Fixed several subtle bugs with local echo in rare race conditions.
    • 🛠 Fixed a subtle race that could result in semi-duplicate emoji reactions.
    • 🛠 Fixed subtle click-handler bugs with the mobile web UI.
    • 👌 Improved defaults to avoid OOM kills on low RAM servers when running
      expensive tools like webpack or Slack import.
    • ➕ Added loading indicators for scrolling downwards and fixed several
      subtle bugs with the message feed discovered as a result.
    • ➕ Added a migration to fix invalid analytics data resulting from a
      missing unique constraint (and then add the constraint).
    • Dramatically simplified the process for adding a new authentication backend.
    • ➕ Added webhook support for AnsibleTower 9.x.y.
    • 📚 Essentially rewrote our API documentation using the OpenAPI format,
      with extensive validation to ensure its accuracy as we modify the API.
    • ✂ Removed New User Bot and Feedback Bot. Messages they had sent are
      migrated to have been sent by Notification Bot.
    • ✂ Removed the "pointer" message ID from Zulip, a legacy concept dating
      to 2012 that predated tracking unread messages in Zulip and has
      largely resulted in unexpected behavior for the last few years.
    • ⬇️ Reduced visual size of emoji in message bodies for a cleaner look.
    • 👍 Replaced file upload frontend with one supporting chunked upload.
      We expect this to enable uploading much larger files using Zulip in
      🚀 future releases.
    • 👌 Improved error messages when trying to invite a user with an
      existing, deactivated, account.
    • 👌 Improved server logging format to refer to users with
      userid@subdomain rather than referencing email addresses.
    • 👌 Improved warnings when sending wildcard mentions to large streams.
    • Migrated the frontend codebase to use native ES6 data structures.
    • Migrated settings for notifications streams to our standard UX model.
    • 🔒 Various security hardening changes suggested by the PySA static analyzer.
    • Modernized the codebase to use many Python 3.6 and ES6 patterns.
    • ↔ Integrated isort, a tool which ensures that our Python codebase
      has clean, sorted import statements.
    • ↔ Integrated PySA, a tool for detecting security bugs in Python
      codebases using the type-checker.
    • ↔ Integrated semgrep, and migrated several regular expression based
      👕 linter rules to use its Python syntax-aware parser.
    • ➕ Added tooling to automatically generate all screenshots in
      📄 integration docs.
    • Restructured the backend for Zulip's system administrator level
      settings system to be more maintainable.
    • 🚀 This release largely completes the SCSS refactoring of the codebase.
    • ✅ Replaced our CasperJS frontend integration test system with Puppeteer.
    • Extracted the typeahead and markdown libraries for reuse in the
      mobile apps.
    • ✂ Removed the legacy websockets-based system for sending messages. This
      system was always a hack, was only ever used for one endpoint, and
      🚤 did not provide a measureable latency benefit over HTTP/2.