Release Notes for Forrest 0.8 Apache Forrest is pleased to release the new version: apache-forrest-0.8 ======================================================================== It can be downloaded from one of the Apache Software Foundation mirror sites [Link: http://forrest.apache.org/mirrors.cgi]. Apache Forrest is a publishing framework that transforms input from various sources into a unified presentation in one or more output formats. The modular and extensible plugin architecture is based on Apache Cocoon and relevant standards, which separates presentation from content. Forrest can generate static documents, or be used as a dynamic server, or be deployed by its automated facility. Requirements ============ A Java Runtime Environment (1.4 or higher) installed. To build from source requires a Java Development Kit (1.4 or higher) Apache Ant is not required: Forrest uses its own version of Ant in tools/ant/ Apache Cocoon is not required: Forrest uses its own version. Installing Apache Forrest ========================= The distribution contains all Forrest resources (skins, XSLTs, images, schemas), source code and Forrest's own website documentation. Copy somewhere permanent, like /usr/local/forrest or c:\forrest (Support for installation on Windows systems into directories containing spaces is very new, please report back on your success or failure.) Set FORREST_HOME environment variable to point to that top-level directory. Add to the system PATH environment variable, i.e. $FORREST_HOME/bin (Unix) or %FORREST_HOME%\bin (Windows) Getting Started =============== See the file index.html for the quick start tips. Issue tracking ============== If you notice what appears to be a bug or wish to make a contribution, please report it via the Forrest issue tracker [Link: http://forrest.apache.org/issues.html]. Feedback ======== Feedback, feature suggestions, contributions, bugs, and any other issues can be discussed on our mailing lists [Link: http://forrest.apache.org/mail-lists.html]. Major Changes in Version 0.8 ============================ ** Note ** This is not a complete list of changes, just some of the more important ones. A full list of changes in this release is available [Link: http://forrest.apache.org/changes.html]. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Changes to the Code Base ------------------------ * [Icon: fix] Thanks to Gunther Sablon for reporting this issue. Plugins were not being deployed to a Webapp WAR file correctly. Committed by RDG. See Issue FOR-735 [Link: http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/FOR-735]. * [Icon: update] Rename webapp build target to run-webapp to distinguish the resulting webapp from one suitable for deployment (use the war target for that) and provide a new xconf that is used in the war to ensure plugins can be found in war files Committed by RDG. See Issue FOR-735 [Link: http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/FOR-735]. * [Icon: fix] Fix caching problem that made a restart neccessary after making a locationmap resource location change. Committed by TWW. See Issue FOR-732 [Link: http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/FOR-732]. * [Icon: fix] After doing 'forrest clean' then Forrest could not be run without network access, due to not being able to retrieve plugin descriptor files. Committed by DC. See Issue FOR-927 [Link: http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/FOR-927]. * [Icon: update] FOR-924 Readding the loading from (default-)forrest.properties which got removed in r430588 when closing FOR-916. Thanks Martin Stockhammer for pointing it out, providing us with a patch and for your contribution. Committed by TS. Thanks to Martin Stockhammer. See Issue FOR-924 [Link: http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/FOR-924]. * [Icon: update] FOR-920 Merging the defaults and project modules to the new properties module. You can use it like {properties:forrest.home}, please refer to the update documentation [Link: docs_0_80/upgrading_08.html] how to change your {defaults:*} {project:*} and {forrest:*}. Committed by TS. * [Icon: remove] Remove xconf support for plugins. Cocoon has moved away from this XConfToolTask xpatch technique. Diff [Link: http://svn.apache.org/viewvc?rev=354749&view=rev] Committed by RDG. * [Icon: add] Added new "clean" targets. Doing 'forrest clean-site' will remove the contents of the project's generated documents directory. Doing 'forrest clean-work' will remove the project's work directories (usually build/tmp and build/webapp which include the Cocoon cache and the Cocoon logs). Doing 'forrest clean' will remove both sections. Committed by DC. * [Icon: add] The broken-links file is now copied into to the site root as "broken-links.xml" so that when building with Forrestbot you can easily view it. Committed by RDG. * [Icon: add] Reviewed all sitemaps to use locationmap references (lm:). At the same time we changed filenames of core stylesheets to follow a filename convention (e.g. html2document.xsl => html-to-document.xsl) which enables automated locationmap matches. Thanks to the many people who were involved with addressing this issue. See the commit logs associated with FOR-200. Committed by RDG. Thanks to Community. See Issue FOR-200 [Link: http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/FOR-200]. * [Icon: add] Prototype of new xml-based properties system. Projects and plugins can use a forrest.properties.xml file. At this stage, it supplements the existing forrest.properties file. See the projectInfo plugin for an example of its use. * [Icon: add] Add notes about naming convention for locationmap references. Gathered from a ForrestFriday IRC session (thanks to Tim Williams for writing them up). See locationmap docs [Link: docs_0_80/locationmap.html]. Committed by RDG. Thanks to Community. See Issue FOR-200 [Link: http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/FOR-200]. * [Icon: add] Added support for Locationmaps. This enables content to be retrieved from a location that is defined in a locationmap file. A project-based file can be located at PROJECT_HOME/src/documentation/content/locationmap.xml while core locationmaps are at $FORREST_HOME/main/webapp/locationmap-*.xml files.The advantage of this is that the URL seen by the user need bear no relation to the location of the source document, thus Forrest can separate the client URL space from the source document URL space. Thus, using the locationmap it is possible to pull together documents from many different locations into a single uniform site.In addition, since the user URL space is now unconnected to the source URL space it is possible to move source documents without breaking any existing user links.See locationmap docs [Link: docs_0_80/locationmap.html] for more information. Thanks to Unico Hommes for the original locationmap implementation which was added to Forrest long ago. Committed by RDG. Changes to Documentation ------------------------ * [Icon: add] Added document to facilitate upgrading to v0.8 Committed by DC. [Link: http://forrest.apache.org/docs/upgrading_08.html] * There are many more documentation changes. [Link: http://forrest.apache.org/changes.html]