We've managed to include some awesome features for SIL 4.0, in the sense that we simplified the administration and the configuration of the plugins. The following changes and improvements affect ALL our add-ons and are available to ALL who use the Kepler add-on suite, free of charge
Configuration Changes
Additional Tables
We have moved everything, including configuration, from the custom tables, and we moved data access to the standard mechanism JIRA provides. This is a huge move that will simplify the import / export of JIRA.
Data Sources
Data sources can now be defined directly from JIRA, provided you have the driver already in the JIRA's 'lib' folder. Of course, the JNDI mechanism still works, but I bet you will find it more convenient to define a datasource directly from the add-ons, and have the chance to test it before usage.
Virtual Files
Starting with this version, files may be stored either on disk or in database. We plan to add a feature to move all the files from disk to database or the other way around, again to simplify the management of the instances.
LDAP Support
We now have multiple LDAP support, albeit only for Microsoft Active Directory. We're still waiting for you to ask us to add support for other LDAP types.
Mail
Mail support was enhanced as well; we added new configuration options, one which will simplify development
STL - SIL Template Language
A major change is the support for mail templates (in fact, templates of any kind). We introduced STL (SIL Template Language), a feature that allows you to put snippets of SIL in some file and run embedded programs. The feature matches closely from the syntax point of view with JSP, i.e. you write embedded SIL code within the corpus of the email.
Other
We unified our thread pools across all add-ons. You can see now live the scripts that are running at some point in time so you can adjust your parameters accordingly. Task queue also records the maximal number of jobs waiting to be executed, so make sure you have enough threads.
User Interface Changes
You will notice a lot of changes in the user interface; we aligned the add-ons to the Atlassian User Interface Recommendations and we introduced new menus and new shortcut links to the configuration sections. We also have changed the editor, adding more support in it
Incompatibilities With Previous Versions
This version presents some incompatibilities with previous version. You are required to take all the necessary precautions when upgrading katl-commons to the 4.0.0 level and up.
Always test your migration path before applying the upgrade in production! Do backups before!
The following table lists the incompatibilities and their motivations, along with their solutions.
| Where / Functionality affected | Risk | Motivation | How to deal with it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scheduling | LOW | Scheduled tasks have become permanent. You asked for it, we provided. Because of this, the previous rules linked to the uniqueness of the task as well as the keys of the scheduled tasks have been changed to reflect the new paradigm | Mitigation / solutions may be found in the corresponding section: Scheduling Routines. The identified risk is low - at least from our point of view - but make sure you have a good grasp of the change. You will need to modify the scripts to reflect it. |
| Mail Templates | LOW | Previous versions were doing a simple search / replace over variables defined between dollar signs (e.g. $var$). If one variable was missing, it was just skipped, and an error was logged. With the introduction of STL, the produced intermediate SIL script syntax must be valid, and all customfields and variables must exist in the scope. | You will need to correct your mail templates. Make sure all variables are defined. You will find more information about the STL in its dedicated section: SIL Template Language. The ending SIL script must be valid syntactically. |
| KRedi - The redirect assistant | MEDIUM | The URL to the redirect page has changed. We've moved Kredi from katl-commons to a more generic framework that works across all Atlassian products. With this change, we had to migrate from Webwork (specific to JIRA) to normal servlets (compatible across the Atlassian stack) | Just change the base path you're calling from external systems according to KRedi - The Redirect Assistant |
| Commons REST service | MEDIUM | The URL to the REST service and parameter structures have changed to better accommodate passing parameter values into the scripts. Functionally, all previous functionality is also covered in the new version. | You will need to update the URL and adapt the structures to the new format. See Common REST Service for details. |