0.9.0 Release

• guid: e8c753c0-74af-410b-9f66-77c3ce194717
• author: Markus Raab
• pubDate: Tue, 06 Aug 2019 12:09:02 +0200
• shortDesc: Cache, Command-line Options, Error Codes

What is Elektra?

Elektra serves as a universal and secure framework to access configuration settings in a global, hierarchical key database.

You can also read this document on our website.

We wrote a new article describing our vision from configuration management perspective.

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

0.9.*

We are proud to present our largest release so far. It is the first release of the 0.9.* version series, which goal is it:

• To prepare Elektra for version 1.0.0, which includes incompatible changes like new error codes (which are already part of this release, hence 0.9.0). When 0.9.* is mature enough, we will call it 1.0.0.
• To make Elektra future-proof so that during 1.*. most of Elektra's functionality can be kept stable
• To cleanup Elektra, including removal of compatibility layers and research prototypes.

Business Plans

To get away from a purely research-oriented approach to a mature foundation, we also need paid employees to fix problems.

We plan to introduce following ways of income:

1. donations
2. paid support/feature requests
3. consultancy

If you are interested in any of these, please contact us via business@libelektra.org

The 0.8.* version series will be maintained on paid requests. If you have maintenance requests and want 0.8.27 to be released, please contact us via business@libelektra.org

Please note, that Elektra will definitely stay 100% free software (BSD licensed). We do not plan to make any part proprietary. We only introduce a way for paid customers to get desired features or help more quickly.

Highlights

• Cache
• Command-line Options
• Error Codes

Cache

Cache is a new global caching plugin. It uses mmapstorage as its storage backend and lazily stores the whole configuration from previous configuration accesses.

With large or many configuration files, the cache brings amazing performance improvements: Let us say, you have 649 INI configuration files mounted with the multifile resolver, completely specified (which means that the specification must be copied to all the configuration settings). Before the cache, retrieving the whole configuration would take 6 or even 13 seconds. With the cache, the whole operation now takes less than 0.5 seconds after the first access.

This is an important step towards the goal of Elektra to integrate all configuration files present on a system.

Limitations:

• Mountpoints that are not connected with files, currently cannot be cached.
• The cache currently does not work together with other global plugins.

By default, the cache will automatically enable itself once the cache plugin is installed. The cache can be found in ~/.cache/elektra.

We also added tools for enabling, disabling and clearing the cache (kdb cache {enable,disable,default,clear}).

A big thanks to (Mihael Pranjić) for the excellent work.

Command-line Options

Gopts is a new plugin that integrates support for command-line options to applications:

• The gopts plugin retrieves the values of argc, argv and envp needed for elektraGetOpts and then makes the call. It is intended to be used as a global plugin, so that command-line options are automatically parsed when kdbGet is called. (Klemens Böswirth)
• The plugin works under WIN32 (via GetCommandLineW and GetEnvironmentString), MAC_OSX (_NSGetArgc, _NSGetArgv) and any system that either has a sysctl(3) function that accepts KERN_PROC_ARGS (e.g. FreeBSD) or when procfs is mounted and either /proc/self or /proc/curproc refers to the current process. If you need support for any other systems, feel free to add an implementation.

This means, that using the plugin, you do not need to call elektraGetOpts yourself anymore.

kdbEnsure is a new function in elektra-kdb. It can be used to ensure that a KDB instance meets certain clauses specified in a contract. In principle this a very powerful tool that may be used for a lot of things. All changes made by kdbEnsure are purely within the KDB handle passed to the function.

For example, kdbEnsure can be used, to ensure the availability of command-line options for your application.

Limitations:

• kdbEnsure only works, if the list plugin is mounted in all appropriate global positions.
• kdbEnsure does not take care of dependencies between plugins.
• Mounting of non-global plugins is not supported.

A big thanks to (Klemens Böswirth) for the excellent work.

Error Codes

With this release, we changed our messy error code system into a more structured and clean way. Similar to SQLStates we changed to structure of our error codes and migrated them. Have a look into the new codes. This allows us to easily extend the specification without breaking existing codes and to avoid risking duplicated errors as we had before. (Michael Zronek)

We were able to reduce the former 214 to now only 9 error codes.

For background information read:

• about error codes
• about error message format

A big thanks to (Michael Zronek) for the excellent work.

Plugins

The following section lists news about the plugins we updated in this release. In total, we added 9 plugins and removed 2 plugins.

Type (New Version)

The type plugin was completely rewritten in C. The old version is now called cpptype. (Klemens Böswirth)

The new type plugin also provides the functionality of the enum and the boolean plugin. These plugins are now considered obsolete and you should use type instead.

A few notes on compatibility:

• the new type does not support the full feature set of enum and boolean, but it supports the features we consider useful.
• the new type doesn't support FSType and empty. These have been deprecated for a long time and there are good alternatives available.
• the new type supports enum, wchar and wstring as types, whereas the old cpptype would throw an error for these. In most cases this won't be a problem, but you should be aware of this breaking change.
• the new type does not support check/type/min and check/type/max, please use the range plugin instead.

To switch from enum to the new type, you have to add either check/type=enum or type=enum. Without a check/type or type metakey, the type plugin will ignore the key. We now also support converting enum values to and from integer values (see README).

To switch from boolean to the new type, you don't have to do anything, if you used the default config. If you used a custom configuration please take a look at the README.

Base64

• We fixed some warnings about implicit type conversions reported by UBSan in the base64 plugin. (René Schwaiger)

Crypto and Fcrypt

• Empty GPG key IDs in the plugin configuration are being ignored by the crypto plugin and the fcrypt plugin. Adding empty GPG key IDs would lead to an error when gpg is being invoked. (Peter Nirschl)
• Apply Base64 encoding to the master password, which is stored within the plugin configuration. This fixes a problem that occurs if ini is used as default storage (see 2591). (Peter Nirschl)
• Fix compilation without deprecated OpenSSL APIs. Initialization and deinitialization is not needed anymore. (Rosen Penev)

CSVStorage

• Support DOS newlines for the csvstorage plugin. (Vlad - Ioan Balan)

Filecheck

• We fixed some warnings about implicit type conversions reported by UBSan. (René Schwaiger)

INI

• Fixed INI plugin when only the root key needs to be written. (Mihael Pranjić)
• Plugin writes to INI files without spaces around '=' anymore. Reading is still possible with and without spaces. (Oleksandr Shabelnyk)

Macaddr

• Added a plugin to handle MAC addresses. kdbGet converts a MAC address into a decimal 64-bit integer (with the most significant 16 bits always set to 0), if the format is supported. kdbSet restores the converted values back to there original form. (Thomas Bretterbauer)

mINI

• We fixed compiler warnings reported by GCC 9 in the unit test code of the plugin. (René Schwaiger)

Mmapstorage

• mmapstorage is now able to persist the Global KeySet, which is used by the cache plugin. (Mihael Pranjić)
• Fixed support for kdb import and kdb export. (Mihael Pranjić)

Multifile

• Fixed segmentation fault in kdbError() function. (Mihael Pranjić)
• Added Global Keyset handle to storage plugin. (Mihael Pranjić)
• Fixed use of wrong resolver handle in the kdbError() function. (Mihael Pranjić)

Quickdump

• quickdump is a new storage plugin. It implements a more concise form of the dump format, which is also quicker too read. Contrary to dump, quickdump only stores keynames relative to the parent key. This allows easy relocation of configurations. (Klemens Böswirth)
• quickdump now also uses an variable length integer encoding to further reduce file size. (Klemens Böswirth)

Reference

• Fixed missing Metadata in README and METADATA.ini. (Michael Zronek)
• Update README.md web tool to show, how to test REST API on localhost. (Dmytro Moiseiuk)

RGBColor

• New plugin to validate hex formatted colors (e.g. #fff or #abcd) and normalize them to rgba (4294967295 (= 0xffffffff) and 2864434397 (= 0xaabbccdd) respectively). It also has support for named colors according to the extended color keywords from CSS3. (Philipp Gackstatter)

Semlock

Removed due to:

• constant pain
• never worked properly
• poor design
• no time in future to maintain (Kurt Micheli)

Spec

• The spec plugin was partly rewritten to better support specifications for arrays. This includes some breaking changes concerning the less used (and also less functional) parts of the plugin. To find out more about these changes take a look at the README. It now better reflects the actually implemented behavior. (Klemens Böswirth)

Specload

• The specload plugin is a special storage plugin. Instead of using a storage file it calls an external application to request its specification. For the transfer it relies on the quickdump plugin. (Klemens Böswirth)
• Currently changing the specification is only allowed in a very limited way. However, in future the plugin should allow overriding a specification in all cases where this can be done safely. NOTE: While the plugin technically allows some modifications, because of a problem with the resolver this cannot be used right now (see limitations).
• We also export elektraSpecloadSendSpec to abstract over the quickdump dependency. (Klemens Böswirth)

Syslog

• We fixed an incorrect format specifier in a call to the syslog function. (René Schwaiger)

Unit

• New plugin to validate units of memory and normalize them into bytes. E.g. 20 KB (normalized to 20000 Byte). (Marcel Hauri)

YAJL

The YAJL plugin which parses JSON files:

• now allows setting a value to the mountpoint. This is represented as a top level value in JSON if no other key is present. (Philipp Gackstatter)
• no longer lists empty parent keys with kdb ls. (Philipp Gackstatter)
• signifies arrays with the metakey array according to the array decision. (Philipp Gackstatter)
• no longer produces additional ___dirdata entries for empty array keys. See also issue #2477. (Philipp Gackstatter)

YAMBi

• YAMBi is now able detect multiple syntax errors in a file. (René Schwaiger)

• The error message now includes more information about the location of syntax errors. For example, for the incorrect YAML input config.yaml:

  key 1: - element 1
   - element 2
  key 2: scalar
         - element 3
  

  , the plugin prints an error message that includes the following text:

  config.yaml:2:2: syntax error, unexpected start of sequence, expecting end of map or key
                    - element 2
                    ^
  config.yaml:4:8: syntax error, unexpected start of sequence, expecting end of map or key
                          - element 3
                          ^
  

  . (René Schwaiger)

• YAMBi now supports Elektra’s boolean data type. (René Schwaiger)

• The plugin now handles YAML key-value pairs without a value at the end of a file correctly. (René Schwaiger)

• The plugin now converts YAML key-value pairs with empty value to null/empty keys. (René Schwaiger)

• YAMBi now converts empty files to a key set containing an empty version of the parent key. (René Schwaiger)

YAML CPP

• The plugin now handles keys that are part of a map, but use a basename ending with array syntax correctly. For example, in a key set that contains keys with the following names:

  user/array/#0
  user/array/#1
  user/map/#0
  user/map/key
  user/map/#1
  

  , user/array/#0 and user/array/#1 represent array elements, while user/map/#0, and user/map/#1 do not, since the key set also contains the key user/map/key. The following Markdown Shell Recorder snippet shows the new behavior of the plugin:

  kdb mount config.yaml user yamlcpp
  kdb set user/array/#0 one
  kdb set user/array/#1 two
  kdb set user/map/#0   three
  kdb set user/map/key  four
  kdb set user/map/#1   five
  kdb file user | xargs cat
  #> array:
  #>   - one
  #>   - two
  #> map:
  #>   "#0": three
  #>   "#1": five
  #>   key: four
  

  . (René Schwaiger)

• YAML CPP now handles the conversion from and to Elektra’s boolean type properly. (René Schwaiger)

• The plugin converts “sparse” key sets properly. For example, for the key set that contains only the key:

  • user/parent/#1/#2/map/#0 with the value arr

  and uses user/parent as parent key, YAML CPP stores the following YAML data:

  - ~
  - - ~
    - ~
    - map:
        - arr
  

  . (René Schwaiger)

• YAML CPP now supports mixed data (nested lists & sequences) better. For example, the plugin now correctly converts the YAML data

  root:
    - element: one
    - element: two
  

  to the key set that contains the following keys:

  user/tests/yaml/root
  user/tests/yaml/root/#0/element
  user/tests/yaml/root/#1/element
  

  .

YAML Smith

• YAML Smith now converts keys that shares a common prefix correctly. For example, the last command in the script:

  kdb mount config.yaml user/tests/yaml yaml
  kdb set user/tests/yaml/common/one/#0 value
  kdb set user/tests/yaml/common/two/#0 first
  kdb set user/tests/yaml/common/two/#1 second
  kdb export user/tests/yaml yamlsmith
  

  now prints the following YAML data:

  common:
    one:
      - "value"
    two:
      - "first"
      - "second"
  

  . (René Schwaiger)

• The plugin now converts Elektra’s boolean values (0, 1) back to YAML’s boolean values (true, false). (René Schwaiger)

Yan LR

• The build system now disables the plugin, if you installed a version of ANTLR 4 that does not support ANTLR’s C++ runtime (like ANTLR 4.5.x or earlier). (René Schwaiger)
• We fixed an ambiguity in the YAML grammar. (René Schwaiger)
• The build system now regenerates the modified parsing code, every time we update the grammar file. (René Schwaiger)
• The plugin now reports the location of syntax errors correctly. (René Schwaiger)
• The lexer for the plugin now emits start tokens for maps at the correct location inside the token stream. This update fixes a problem, where the plugin sometimes reported incorrect error messages for the first syntax error in a YAML file. (René Schwaiger)
• The plugin now stores the end position of map start tokens correctly. Before this update the plugin would sometimes not show the markers (^) that point to the error positions inside the input. (René Schwaiger)
• Yan LR now supports Elektra’s boolean data type. (René Schwaiger)
• The plugin now handles YAML key-value pairs that contain no value at the end of a file correctly. (René Schwaiger)
• The plugin now converts YAML key-value pairs with empty value to null/empty keys. (René Schwaiger)
• The plugin converts “empty” YAML files to a key set that contains an empty version of the parent key. (René Schwaiger)

YAwn

• YAwn is now able to print error messages for multiple syntax errors. (René Schwaiger)

• We also improved the error messages of YAwn, which now also contain the input that caused a syntax error. For example, for the input

  key: value
    - element
  

  the plugin prints an error message that contains the following text:

  config.yaml:2:3: Syntax error on input “start of sequence”
                     - element
                     ^
  

  . (René Schwaiger)

• The plugin now supports Elektra’s boolean data type. (René Schwaiger)

• YAwn handles YAML key-value pairs that contain no value at the end of a file correctly. (René Schwaiger)

• The plugin now converts YAML key-value pairs with empty value to null/empty keys. (René Schwaiger)

• YAwn now stores empty files as a key set containing an empty parent key. (René Schwaiger)

YAy PEG

• YAy PEG now also supports PEGTL 2.8. (René Schwaiger)

• The plugin now includes the input that could not be parsed in error messages. (René Schwaiger)

• We improved the error messages for certain errors slightly. For example, the error message for the input

  "double quoted
  

  now includes the following text

  1:14: Missing closing double quote or incorrect value inside flow scalar
        "double quoted
                      ^
  

  . (René Schwaiger)

• YAy PEG now supports compact mappings:

  - key1: value1
    key2: value2
  

  and compact sequences:

  - - element1
    - element2
  

  correctly. (René Schwaiger)

• The plugin now supports Elektra’s boolean data type. (René Schwaiger)

• YAy PEG now converts YAML key-value pairs with empty value to null/empty keys. (René Schwaiger)

• The plugin now translates an empty file to a key set that contains a single empty parent key. (René Schwaiger)

Libraries

The text below summarizes updates to the C (and C++)-based libraries of Elektra.

Compatibility

We introduced several incompatible changes:

• different error codes are returned
• INI and YAJL plugins might write different files with the same KeySets

We changed following symbols:

• elektraIsReferenceRedundant
• elektraResolveReference
• elektraPluginFindGlobal
• kdbEnsure

Core

• kdbGet now calls global postgetstorage plugins with the parent key passed to kdbGet, instead of a random mountpoint. (Klemens Böswirth)
• Fixed a double cleanup error (segmentation fault) when mounting global plugins. (Mihael Pranjić)
• Logging in Elektra was changed with this release. If Elektra is compiled with ENABLE_LOGGER enabled, we now log warnings and errors to stderr and everything except debug messages to syslog. If ENABLE_DEBUG is also enabled, debug messages are logged to syslog as well. Previously you had to make some manual changes to the code, to see most of the logging messages. (Klemens Böswirth)
• The logger does not truncate the file name incorrectly anymore, if __FILE__ contains a relative (instead of an absolute) filepath. (René Schwaiger)
• Disabled any plugin execution when we have a cache hit or no update from backends. The old behavior can be enabled for testing using ENABLE_DEBUG and adding the "debugGlobalPositions" metakey to the parentKey of the kdbGet invocation. (Mihael Pranjić)
• Removed ingroup from error messages to reduce verbosity. (Michael Zronek)
• Fixed minor problem when kdb_long_double_t is not available (e.g. mips32). (Matthias Schoepfer)
• Only add benchmarks if BUILD_TEST is set in CMake. (Matthias Schoepfer)
• We fixed some warnings about implicit conversion to unsigned int reported by UBSan. (René Schwaiger)

Ease

• The functions for reference resolving used in the reference plugin have been extracted into libease. This lets other parts of Elektra easily use references and ensures a consistent syntax for them. (Klemens Böswirth)

Bindings

Bindings allow you to utilize Elektra using various programming languages. This section keeps you up-to-date with the multi-language support provided by Elektra.

• JNA is now not experimental anymore. (Markus Raab)
• gsettings is not default anymore when installed. (Markus Raab)
• Add fix for creating the Key and KeySet objects in the HelloElektra.java file. (Dmytro Moiseiuk)
• We fixed a warning about a deprecated default constructor in the C++ binding reported by GCC 9.0. (René Schwaiger)

Tools

• kdb get -v now displays if the resulting value is a default-value defined by the metadata of the key. (Thomas Bretterbauer)
• kdb cp now succeeds if the target-keys already have the same values as the source-keys. (Thomas Bretterbauer)
• web-ui does not show empty namespace anymore (Josef Wechselauer)
• kdb import does not fail anymore if executed more than once with the same target in the spec-namespace. (Thomas Bretterbauer)
• kdb mount avoid adding sync if sync is already provided. (Markus Raab)
• kdb list-tools now supports KDB_EXEC_PATH environment variables that contain spaces. (René Schwaiger)
• gen-gpg-testkey is added to the default tools list (see #2668).(Peter Nirschl)
• kdb getenv now executed correctly from within tests (Markus Raab)
• kdb-bash-completion now works on Mac (see #2836). (Eduardo Santana)
• kdb rm supports --without-elektra and returns 11 on key not found. (Markus Raab)

Code generation

kdb gen is now no longer an external tool implemented via python, but rather a first class command of the kdb tool. For now it only supports code generation for use with the highlevel API. Try it by running kdb gen elektra <parentKey> <outputName>, where <parentKey> is the parent key of the specification to use and <outputName> is some prefix for the output files. If you don't have your specification mounted, use kdb gen -F <plugin>:<file> elektra <parentKey> <outputName> to load it from <file> using plugin <plugin>.

. (Klemens Böswirth)

Scripts

• The reformat-shfmt script now also formats tests/shell/include_common.sh.in. Additionally it ensures that the file is 1000 lines long, so that line numbers of files using it are easier to read. (Klemens Böswirth)

• The clang-format wrapper script now also checks the supported maximum version of Clang-Format. (René Schwaiger)

• The script reformat-shfmt now also reformats shell support files (*.in) in the scripts folder. (René Schwaiger)

• The reformat-* scripts now allow you to specify a list of files that should be formatted. Only files actual suitable for the reformat script, will reformat. So e.g. calling reformat-cmake src/include/kdbprivate.h doesn't change any files. (Klemens Böswirth)

• The script scripts/dev/reformat-all is a new convenience script that calls all other reformat-* scripts. (Klemens Böswirth)

• The script scripts/pre-commit-check-formatting can be used as a pre-commit hook, to ensure files are formatted before committing. (Klemens Böswirth)

• The link checker now prints broken links to the standard error output. (René Schwaiger)

• We added a script, called benchmark-yaml that compares the run-time of the YAML plugins:

  • YAML CPP,
  • Yan LR,
  • YAMBi,
  • YAwn, and
  • YAy PEG

  for a certain input file with hyperfine. (René Schwaiger)

• Added kdb reset and kdb reset-elektra, fixed kdb stash. (Markus Raab)

Benchmarks

• The benchmarking tool benchmark_plugingetset now also supports only executing the get method for the specified plugin. For example, to convert the data stored in the file benchmarks/data/yaypeg.test.in with the YAy PEG plugin to a key set you can now use the following command:

  benchmark_plugingetset benchmarks/data user yaypeg get
  

  . (René Schwaiger)

Documentation

Style

• The documentation now uses fenced code blocks to improved the syntax highlighting of code snippets. (René Schwaiger)

• We added recommendations about the style of Markdown headers to our coding guidelines. (René Schwaiger)

• We now use title case for most headings in the documentation. (René Schwaiger)

• We added instructions on how to reformat code with

  • Clang-Format,
  • cmake-format,
  • Prettier, and
  • shfmt

  to the coding guidelines. (René Schwaiger)

Tutorials

• We added a basic tutorial that tells you how to write a (well behaved) storage plugin. (René Schwaiger)

• Improved the checkconf section in the plugin tutorial. (Peter Nirschl)

• We added a tutorial on how to benchmark the execution time of plugins using benchmark_plugingetset and hyperfine. (René Schwaiger)

• The new profiling tutorial describes how to determine the execution time of code using

  • Callgrind, and
  • XRay

  . (René Schwaiger)

• For beginners we added a tutorial that guides them through the process of contributing to libelektra. (Thomas Bretterbauer)

• Added a section on elektraPluginGetGlobalKeySet in the plugin tutorial. (Vid Leskovar)

• Added a step-by-step tutorial for beginners to run all tests with Docker. (Oleksandr Shabelnyk)

• Extend/improve Java bindings related documentation in tutorial and readme. (Oleksandr Shabelnyk)

• Added a step-by-step tutorial for running reformatting scripts with Docker. (Oleksandr Shabelnyk)

• Covered Resolving Missing *.so Library Error in tutorial. (Oleksandr Shabelnyk)

• Added a basic tutorial on How-To: Write a Java Plugin (Dmytro Moiseiuk) and (Miruna Orsa)

Spelling Fixes

• Write Elektra with capital letter in cascading tutorial. (Vlad - Ioan Balan)
• Add typo fix to the hello-elektra tutorial. (Dmytro Moiseiuk)
• Add typo fix to the Java kdb tutorial. (Dominik Hofmann)
• Fixed capitalization of the initial letter in Readme. (Miruna Orsa)
• Improved readability in README. (Philipp Gackstatter)
• We fixed some spelling mistakes in the documentation. (René Schwaiger)
• Fix typo in root README.md and 'built-in' => 'built-in' in several places (Raphael Gruber)
• Fixed typos in cassandra.ini (arampaa)

Other

• The Markdown Link Converter now uses the style

  filename:line:0
  

  instead of

  filename|line col 0|
  

  to show the location data for broken links. This is also the same style that Clang and GCC use when they display location information for compiler errors. This update has the advantage, that certain tools such as TextMate are able to convert the location data, providing additional features, such as clickable links to the error source. (René Schwaiger)

• The Markdown Link Converter uses the index 1 for the first line number instead of 0. This update fixes an off-by-one-error, when the user tries to use the error location data printed by the tool in a text editor. (René Schwaiger)

• We added a badge for LGTM to the main ReadMe file. (René Schwaiger)

• Added LCDproc and Cassandra specification examples. These examples provide a good guideline for writing specifications for configurations. (Michael Zronek)

• Drastically improved the error message format. For more information look here. (Michael Zronek)

• Added a guideline for writing consistent and good error messages. For more information look here. (Michael Zronek)

• Every kdb command now accepts v and d as option to show more information in case of warnings or errors. (Michael Zronek)

• Improved qt-gui error popup to conform with the new error message format. (Raffael Pancheri)

• We fixed the format specifiers in the “Hello, Elektra” example. (René Schwaiger)

• Expanded the Python Tutorial to cover installation under Alpine Linux. (Philipp Gackstatter)

• We wrote a tutorial which is intended to help newcomers contributing to libelektra. (Thomas Bretterbauer)

• We fixed various broken links in the documentation. (René Schwaiger)

• Fix finding of jni.h library. (Dmytro Moiseiuk)

• Added license for asciinema. (Anastasia @nastiaulian)

• We incorporated kdb-introduction into the man page for kdb (Markus Raab)

Tests

• We now test the Directory Value Plugin with additional test data. (René Schwaiger)

• The variables:

  • SPEC_FOLDER
  • SYSTEM_FOLDER
  • USER_FOLDER

  in the inclusion file for shell test were set incorrectly, if the repository path contained space characters. (René Schwaiger)

• The CFramework now also compares the names of meta keys. (René Schwaiger)

• The release notes check does not report an illegal number anymore, if the release notes were not updated at all. (René Schwaiger)

• We added a test for the keyhelper-class which checks if rebasePath calculates the new path for cascading target-keys correctly. (Thomas Bretterbauer)

• Enable MSR for the crypto and fcrypt tutorial (#1981).(Peter Nirschl)

• We fixed the Markdown Shell Recorder test for the command kdb get. (René Schwaiger)

• The tests

  • testscr_check_real_world,
  • testscr_check_resolver, and
  • testscr_check_spec

  now also works correctly, if the user and system directory file paths contain space characters. (René Schwaiger)

Source Code Checks

• The formatting instructions printed by check_formatting now also work correctly, if

  • the diff output does not start with the test number added by CTest, and
  • you use a non-POSIX shell such as fish

  . (René Schwaiger)

• We reformatted the CMake source code with cmake-format 0.5.4 and also check the style of CMake code with this new version of the tool. (René Schwaiger)

• We now check the source code of the repository with LGTM. (René Schwaiger)

• We fixed various warnings about

  • missing or duplicated include guards,
  • undefined behavior,
  • incorrect format specifiers,
  • unnecessary statements,
  • short names for global variables, and
  • empty if-statements

  reported by LGTM. (René Schwaiger)

Build

CMake

• We now disable the option INSTALL_SYSTEM_FILES by default. This change makes it possible to install Elektra using Homebrew on Linux without any changes to Elektra’s Linuxbrew formula. (René Schwaiger) Add -DINSTALL_SYSTEM_FILES=ON for previous behavior.
• The build system now rebuilds the JNA binding with Maven, if you change any of the Java source files of the binding. (René Schwaiger)
• testshell_markdown_tutorial_crypto is not compiled and executed if gen-gpg-testkey is not part of TOOLS. (Peter Nirschl)
• Plugin tests are now only added, if BUILD_TESTING=ON. (Klemens Böswirth)
• The symbol list for the static version is now exported directly from a CMake function. (Klemens Böswirth)
• Building Elektra with enabled io_glib binding does not require libuv anymore. (René Schwaiger)

Docker

Alpine Linux

• Our Docker image for Alpine Linux now uses the base image for Alpine Linux 3.9. (René Schwaiger)
• We added PEGTL to the Alpine Docker image. (René Schwaiger)

Debian

• We now use the default JDK on Debian sid, since the package openjdk-8-jdk is not available in the official unstable repositories anymore. (René Schwaiger)

• We added

  • Bison, and
  • YAEP

  to the image for Debian sid. (René Schwaiger)

• We now offer images for the latest stable version of Debian codenamed “buster”. (René Schwaiger)

Ubuntu

• We added a Dockerfile for Ubuntu Disco Dingo. (René Schwaiger)

Other Updates

• The Docker images for

  • Debian stretch, and
  • Debian sid,

  now include the Python YAML library recommended by cmake-format. (René Schwaiger)

Vagrant

• The Vagrant file for Ubuntu Artful Aardvark now installs the Python YAML library recommended by cmake-format. (René Schwaiger)

Infrastructure

Cirrus

• We added the build job 🔗 Check, which checks the documentation for broken links. (René Schwaiger)

Jenkins

• We disabled the tests:

  • testmod_crypto_botan,
  • testmod_crypto_openssl,
  • testmod_dbus,
  • testmod_dbusrecv,
  • testmod_fcrypt,
  • testmod_gpgme, and
  • testmod_zeromqsend

  , since they are known to fail in high load scenarios. (René Schwaiger)

• We added deprecated plugins to the tests. (Markus Raab)

• We increased the automatic timeout for jobs that show no activity from 5 to 10 minutes. (René Schwaiger)

• We improved the exclusion patterns for the Coveralls coverage analysis. (René Schwaiger)

• We now again build the API documentation of master and we now also build the API documentation of PRs. (Markus Raab)

• We added buster build jobs. (Markus Raab)

Restyled

• We added a configuration file for Restyled. Currently Restyled monitors changes to Shell code in pull requests and fixes code that does not fit the coding guideline, by adding additional formatting commit to PRs. (René Schwaiger)

Travis

• We removed the build job for the Haskell binding and Haskell plugin. For more information, please take a look here. (Klemens Böswirth)
• We always use GCC 9 for the build job 🍏 GCC. This update makes sure that the build job succeeds, even if Homebrew adds a new major version of the compiler. (René Schwaiger)
• We simplified our Travis configuration file, removing various unnecessary and unused code. In this process we also got rid of the caching directives, we previously used to speed up the Haskell build job 🍏 Haskell. (René Schwaiger)

Website

The website is generated from the repository, so all information about plugins, bindings and tools are always up-to-date. Furthermore, we changed:

• Our entry for Elektra has been approved in the Free Software Directory: https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Elektra
• Added GitHub build status badges to website (hesirui)
• We updated part of a test for the snippet converter. (René Schwaiger)
• Fixed anchor links on the website (hesirui)
• Added Docsearch in top-bar of website (hesirui)

Outlook

We are currently working on following topics:

• Go bindings and improved Web-UI (Raphael Gruber)
• semantic 3-way merging (Dominic Jaeger)
• improved error handling (Michael Zronek)
• Rust bindings (Philipp Gackstatter)
• elektrify LCDproc (Klemens Böswirth) and (Jakob Fischer)
• configuration upgrades (Lukas Kilian)
• default storage (René Schwaiger) and (Jakob Fischer)
• shell completion (Ulrike Schäfer)
• improved developer experience (Hani Torabi)
• Ansible bindings (Thomas Waser)
• misconfiguration tracker (Vanessa Kos)
• plugin interface improvements (Vid Leskovar)

Statistics

About 40 authors changed 1278 files with 49409 insertions(+) and 13883 deletions(-) in 2025 commits.

We closed 114 issues for this release.

Join the Initiative!

We welcome new contributors! Read here about how to get started.

As first step, you could give us feedback about these release notes. Contact us via our issue tracker.

Get the Release!

You can download the release from here or GitHub

The hashsums are:

• name: /home/markus/elektra-0.9.0.tar.gz
• size: 7390149
• md5sum: 5cf9935515aba0567d6014a3693e415a
• sha1: 05ebe99c87b89a7cac58bf45cd3aff200cc1fd8d
• sha256: fcdbd1a148af91e2933d9a797def17d386a17006f629d5146020fe3b1b51ddd8

The release tarball is also available signed by Markus Raab using GnuPG from here or on GitHub

Already built API documentation can be found here or on GitHub.

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

Best regards, Elektra Initiative