[Smartfrog-developer] announcing SmartFrog 3.11.005 beta

SourceForge Headquarters 225 Broadway Suite 1600 San Diego, CA 92101 +1 (858) 454-5900

It seems like only last week that I was making a new release. Wait a 
minute, it was :)

This is a new iteration with improved RPM termination and some of the 
components included as RPMs. If you are installing SmartFrog via RPMs, 
this update is very important. For other users, the main changes have 
been test related, which have had less effect to the core libraries, 
except in the TestCompound component.

As usual, please file defects on http://jira.smartfrog.org/ , send 
emails to the smartfrog-developer list. We plan for another release in 
two-three weeks time, depending on the feature set.

-Steve

Attached: the JIRA issue log as HTML links.

SmartFrog 3.11.005beta
======================

This is a new release of SmartFrog, the Java-based, LPGL-licensed 
distributed
deployment framework developed by HP Laboratories. SmartFrog enables
applications to be deployed across multiple machines, configuring different
aspects of the system so that they are all consistently configured, and 
managing
the life-cycle of the application as a whole. The project's home page is
http://smartfrog.org/

The release artifacts are available at

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=87384&package_id=176308

This release is 3.11.005beta; built from revision 4827
of the SVN repository. This release has an extended language
with the ability to tag attributes, and includes the following items:

* Core SmartFrog daemon, including services to manage files, start and stop
   Java and native programs.
* Example components and applications.
* Ant support: ant tasks to deploy and terminate applications from a build.
* Ant components: the ability to execute ant tasks in a deployment.
* Anubis: a partition aware tuple-space that can be used to implement fault
   tolerant systems.
* JMX: the ability to configure and manage JMX components, and to manage
   SmartFrog components over JMX.
* Logging: integration with Apache commons-logging and Log4J
* Networking: email, FTP, SSH, DNS support.
* Quartz: scheduled operations using Quartz libraries.
* Scripting: support for BSF-hosted scripting languages
* WWW: deployment of WAR and EAR files to application servers. 
deploy-by-copy
   is provided for all application servers that support, and a 
tomcat-specific
   component can communicate with Apache Tomcat. The Jetty component can
   configure and deploy individual servlets, eliminating much of the 
need for WAR
   files themselves.

For Java 1.5 systems, there are some extra components:
* Database: components to issue database commands, and deploy HSLDB and 
MySQL.
* Testing: Distributed JUnit and component testing with SFUnit.
* XML: XML support with XOM.
* XMPP: Presence and messaging over Jabber.

Packaging
=========

This release is available as:

* RPM files inside a .tar.gz file.
* a JAR installer.
* the original core smartfrog distribution as .zip and .tar.gz (deprecated)

The RPM installation is for RPM-based Linux systems. It comprises three RPM
files, smartfrog, smartfrog-daemon and smartfrog-demo:

smartfrog:        the core SmartFrog distribution.
smartfrog-daemon: the shell scripts to add the smartfrog distribution to the
                   path, and to run the daemon on start-up.
smartfrog-demo:   example code and documentation.

All the JAR files are also published to a repository that is compatible with
Apache Maven and Ivy. Add http://smartfrog.sourceforge.net/repository/
to your repository list to pull SmartFrog artifacts into your Ivy- or 
Maven- based build.

There are also SmartFrog components to retrieve artifacts from such a 
repository
(the Library components under /org/smartfrog/services/os/java/library.sf ),
which can be used for dynamic download of SmartFrog and other artifacts.

Security warning
================

Unless SmartFrog is configured with security, a running daemon
will listen on its configured port for incoming deployment requests, and 
deploy
the applications with the rights of the user running the daemon. When the
smartfrog-daemon RPM is installed, that means that a process running as root
will be listening on an open port for incoming deployment requests. Do not
deploy SmartFrog this way on any untrusted network, not without turning 
security
on and, ideally, recreating the RPMs with signed JAR files.

Building SmartFrog
==================

SmartFrog requires Java 1.4 and Ant 1.7 to build. For a complete release,
Java1.5 or later is required.

The distribution does not include a source tree adequate to build the entire
system. Please follow the instructions at
   http://sourceforge.net/svn/?group_id=87384
and check out smartfrog/trunk/core from our repository.

This release was built with revision 4827 of the repository, which
is available under the SVN branch
https://smartfrog.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/smartfrog/tags/release3.11.005beta

We strongly encourage anyone interested in building or extending 
smartfrog to
get involved in the smartfrog developer mailing list, which can be found 
from
the sourceforge project page http://sourceforge.net/projects/smartfrog/

Reporting Bugs
==============

Please file all bug reports at http://jira.smartfrog.org/

Thank you!

The SmartFrog Team        http://smartfrog.org/

Changes since last release
==========================

Since the release 3.11.003beta, the primary changes have been in RPM
packaging and distribution.

* The smartfrog-install JAR is the cross-platform installer JAR,
   recommended for all systems except where RPM installation is desired.

* There are now RPM packages for Anubis and logging services (the latter
   includes Apache Log4J and commons-logging)

* Uninstalling smartfrog-daemon RPM shuts down the /etc/init.d/smartfrogd
   daemon

* Uninstalling smartfrog RPM triggers an attempt to shut down any
   running SmartFrog process

Removing component JARs, such as smartfrog-anubis or smartfrog-logging
does not shut down SmartFrog; this is still something being considered.
Please test and report on any problems with RPM install/uninstall, as
this is an area we are actively trying to stabilise. All RPMs are tested
by installing and removing them from an RHEL5 system, as part of the
build process; behaviour on other RPM-based distributions is still
something we are interested in.

There have been improvements in how tests are run, but these do not
involve significant changes to the core other than in test-related
components.

** Bug
     * [SFOS-48]  - TestCompound, when set up to terminate gracefully
                    (sfShouldTerminate=true) terminates abnormally if
                    the actions threw an exception, even if they were
                    expected
     * [SFOS-272] - Anubis Ping Heartbeat protocol not setting bits in 
heartbeats
     * [SFOS-308] - smartfrog rpm should shut down sfDaemon in %preun pahse
     * [SFOS-310] - the new installer JAR is  not uploading
     * [SFOS-316] - daemon rpm doesnt stop the daemon; raises an error
     * [SFOS-333] - TestCompound should retain termination record text
                    when converting from an abnormal to a normal termination
     * [SFOS-337] - ConditionalTest is failing
     * [SFOS-338] - SequenceTest is failing
     * [SFOS-340] - error when uninstalling the daemons
     * [SFOS-341] - org.smartfrog.test.system.functions.FunctionsSystemTest
                    failing in cruise control: race condition?
     * [SFOS-343] - rpms aren't deleted in a remote-upload
     * [SFOS-344] - redistributables are logging at debug

** Improvement
     * [SFOS-237] - Automate creation of PDF files from .sxw templates
     * [SFOS-311] - Automate upload of maven artifacts
     * [SFOS-315] - add an IsPropertySet condition to look for a system 
property
     * [SFOS-327] - allow <sf-parse> task to take a parsertargets.txt file
                    containing the target list
     * [SFOS-328] - Improve bulk loading of parsertargets
     * [SFOS-334] - make testblock deployable out the box
     * [SFOS-342] - Move TextFile output logic to FileSystem

** New Feature
     * [SFOS-330] - add a links directory with unversioned symlinks to 
the JARs

** Task
     * [SFOS-275] - Copy up new maven artifacts to sourceforge
     * [SFOS-277] - Automate creation of template release annoucement
     * [SFOS-313] - move OptionSet parsing from a switch on characters
                    to string comparision
     * [SFOS-314] - add a -quietexit option to SfSystem
     * [SFOS-331] - add anubis RPM

** Sub-task
     * [SFOS-318] - make 
org.smartfrog.test.system.workflow.conditional.ConditionalTest
                    async