0.8.18 Release

• guid: 190576e0-9fef-486e-b8da-c4e75be08329
• author: Markus Raab
• pubDate: Fri, 16 Sep 2016 23:31:27 +0200
• shortDesc: adds intercept open, crypto plugins & improved git-resolver

What is Elektra?

Elektra serves as a universal and secure framework to access configuration parameters in a global, hierarchical key database. For a small demo see here:

Highlights

• Intercept open syscalls which allows Elektra to dynamically generate config files from Elektra’s database
• Experimental version of cryptographic plugins
• A new zsh completion file (next to the bash completion file)
• Gitresolver allows to directly read and write config files from Git instead of files present in the file system.
• Survey completed successfully (and debts paid), we are now preparing raw data.

Crypto Plugin

Gpg is now used to decrypt a master password, which is used by the individual crypto backends. So all necessary parts for encryption of decryption of individual keys is present.

Furthermore, a new botan backend was implemented.

See here

Thanks to Peter Nirschl.

Open Interception

When Elektra directly modifies config files which are on the disc, and applications read the config files without Elektra, Elektra has no control over the access, e.g. we cannot dynamically calculate values. To avoid this, we wrote a library that intercepts the open-call.

Together with the mozprefs plugin, we got control over the configuration of Firefox and can dynamically change config values with all possibilities Elektra provides.

For easy setup, we implemented the script configure-firefox.

See here

Thanks to Thomas Waser.

Resolver

Resolvers in Elektra are the code that are responsible to determine where content should be read from and stored to. They are independent of the actual configuration file syntax.

The gitresolver allows you to get/store config data in git.

The blockresolver allows Elektra to take control of parts of the configuration file. This is useful for config files such as vim or zsh, which contain program code. The plugin allows you to split config files with special markers into parts containing code and others controlled by Elektra.

zsh completion

Added zsh completion file, and a script (kdb install-sh-completion) that installs bash+zsh completion when the default installation places do not work (e.g. for macOS).

Thanks to Sebastian Bachmann.

Documentation

• fix kdb-import man page, thanks to Kurt Micheli
• mark keyIsSystem/keyIsUser as internal
• fix doxygen reference to example
• better document that global-mount or gmount will overwrite previously mounted global plugins
• fix spelling mistake, thanks to René Schwaiger
• Wrote tutorial how to use Elektra-python bindings, thanks to Ulrike Schäfer

Quality

• shell recorder test cases now run during make test, thanks to Kurt Micheli and René Schwaiger (Warning: might remove present keys when it conflicts with their mountpoints)
• find-tools now is pep and pyflakes happy, thanks to Kurt Micheli
• fix bashism, thanks to Thomas Waser and Kurt Micheli
• better error message for conditionals plugin, thanks to Thomas Waser
• better error message for augeas plugin, thanks to Felix Berlakovich
• Many compilation warnings fixed, thanks to Gabriel Rauter, Thomas Waser
• GSettings: fix double free, thanks to Gabriel Rauter
• Fix external links and implement an external link checker, thanks to Kurt Micheli
• Fix openwrt/musl warnings with wrong printf format, thanks to Thomas Waser
• Fix NODEP metadata, allows you to build all plugins that do not have dependencies.

Compatibility

As always, the ABI and API of kdb.h is fully compatible, i.e. programs compiled against an older 0.8 version of Elektra will continue to work (ABI) and you will be able to recompile programs without errors (API).

Libtools

Libtools got a new major version (SOVERSION 0 -> 1):

• backend/plugin configs are now validated by plugins (needed by gpg plugin, which checks if wrong key IDs are supplied during mount)
• resolveRecommends was never implemented and was now removed

Plugins

The plugins conditionals and mathcheck are incompatible in some cases because of changes in syntax.

Proposal

New API: keyRel2 which differs from keyRel by allowing you to specify which relation should be checked.

Development

• GitHub descriptions+workflow (displayed by github when creating PRs and issues)
• new trigger phases for GitHub, see doc/Git thanks to Mihael Pranjić
• valgrind suppressions are great again, thanks to Peter Nirschl
• Plugins get a new namespace internal which can be used for metadata that is not relevant for other plugins.
• kdberrors.h is only generated once, which allows us to use other build systems, thanks to René Schwaiger
• INCLUDE_SYSTEM_DIRECTORIES in add_plugin allows you to add an include path where warnings are suppressed (useful for boost).
• infos/provides now allows multiple entries

Packaging

• Plugin-provider CRYPTO can be used to enable/disable all crypto plugin variants (not enabled by default because its experimental).
• Config option ENABLE_OPTIMIZATIONS, enable by default: trade more memory for speed (can be turned off on embedded systems)
• INSTALL_SYSTEM_FILES is now off by default on macOS.
• bash-completion is installed to where pkg-config tells us, thanks to Gabriel Rauter (fallback is now /usr/share/bash-completion/completions/kdb) was /etc/bash_completion.d/kdb (removed)
• zsh is now installed to /usr/share/zsh/vendor-completions/_kdb (except for Darwin, where /usr/local/share/zsh/site-functions is used)
• removed /etc/profile.d/kdb.sh: the script elektraenv.sh was removed (and is no longer installed), superseded by elektrify-getenv
• added scripts install-sh-completion configure-firefox elektrify-open
• added plugins libelektra-blockresolver.so libelektra-boolean.so libelektra-crypto_botan.so libelektra-crypto_openssl.so libelektra-desktop.so libelektra-mozprefs.so libelektra-passwd.so
• added tests testmod_blockresolver testmod_boolean testmod_crypto_botan testmod_crypto gcrypt testmod_crypto_openssl testmod_mozprefs testmod_passwd test_opmphm_vheap test_opmphm_vstack
• added test data blockresolver mozprefs passwd

Other

• Conditionals and mathcheck plugins got support to specify relative keys, thanks to Thomas Waser
• kdb command-list: commands are written in bold
• GSettings backend can be build standalone, thanks to Gabriel Rauter
• first data structures for order preserving minimal perfect hash map, thanks to Kurt Micheli
• added a new passwd plugin, thanks to Thomas Waser
• boolean plugin to normalize boolean values, thanks to Thomas Waser
• desktop plugin to detect which desktop currently is running (supports kde, gnome, tde, unity or any other XDG conformant desktop)
• doc/paper contains some info for joss

Get It!

You can download the release from here and also here on GitHub

• name: elektra-0.8.18.tar.gz
• size: 2582183
• md5sum: 62fe0fbf9ee57ffaa58a982f602f596a
• sha1: 743484e16b102a00cd58956a49f0c558939d56a8
• sha256: 9ee65895ba5cba6736c13c264637664c1410b25f4aaaeac8f1f83712ff93d53b

This release tarball now is also available signed by me using gpg

already built API documentation can be found here

Stay tuned!

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For any questions and comments, please contact the Mailing List the issue tracker on GitHub or by email elekt.nosp@m.ra@m.nosp@m.arkus.nosp@m.-raa.nosp@m.b.org.

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For more information, see https://libelektra.org

Best regards, Markus