2.0-alpha1 release

The Aegir team is pleased to announce the first preview release (alpha) of the Aegir 2.x branch. (add more blabla here)

Those release notes detail the changes since the 2.x branch was first created, all the way back two years ago, when 1.0 was released. Of course, we are not detailing all the changes made in the 1.x series that are all part of the 2.x, but only the changes specific to the 2.x release.

1. Major changes

The 2.x series is the result of almost 2 years of development. We have been pretty busy with the maintenance of the 1.x branch, so development has been sometimes intermittent, and it is not over! This release is only a first of a series of alpha releases that are tailored to make upcoming changes available to a wider audience than people ready to install from git. Still, this first alpha already packs a lot of changes.

  • (Symphony code refactor)
  • SSL improvements:
  • Drush 5 support
    • includes better support for archive-dump command
    • means we also drop the dependency on drush make 2.3, now included in Drush 5
  • Debian package improvements
    • now a "native" debian package
    • Nginx support in the Debian package
    • drop explicit dependency on Postfix
  • Nginx improvements:
    • fixed support for nginx 1.3 and newer
    • better defaults for caching
  • hosting-queue-runner merged into core and renamed to hosting-queued, enabled by default

2. Major API changes

Those changes are, as usual, more explicitly documented in the upgrade path documentation.

  • hosting-task now needs a --force argument to run a non-queued task
  • functions that were deprecated in 1.x are now removed
  • the email and client_email database fields are now removed from client and site node types
  • native Debian package
  • Nginx support in the Debian package
  • do not force postfix

3. Installing and upgrading

The canonical source of installation documentation is on the community site at:

http://community.aegirproject.org/installing

In a similar fashion, the upgrade documentation is:

http://community.aegirproject.org/upgrading

Within those sections you'll find step-by-step instructions for performing both manual and automatic upgrade processes.

It is still imperative that you read the the upgrade path and version-specific information and follow all version-specific upgrade instructions before trying to run the upgrade script or manual upgrade. This especially applies to users upgrading from releases prior to 0.4-alpha8, including 0.3.

For users coming from the 0.4 betas or recent rc releases, there are unlikely to be any version-specific manual steps required to upgrade, but you should make a habit of reading them anyway just to make sure. No-one likes a nasty surprise!

4. Need help?

If you struggle to install or upgrade your Aegir system, you have a number of options available to you for getting help.

Consult this page for more information: http://community.aegirproject.org/help

Thanks to our awesome community for their help, support and encouragement as always! Enjoy the new release :)

5. Features and improvements

6. Bugfixes

7. New contrib modules

To be completed - not sure this belongs, as those are not necessarily compatible with 2.x...