Open Chronology Files

Changes since v0.8.1.

Early release. In SemVer terms, anything may change before 1.0, including file formats, the HTTP API and settings, though changes to .ochx and .och files will come with conversions.

New

• Directory sign-in: LDAP and Active Directory (#286, [#293]): schools and organisations can let people sign in with their directory account. Set LDAP_URL, a service account (LDAP_BIND_DN, LDAP_BIND_PASSWORD), LDAP_BASE_DN, and optionally a user filter (Active Directory's by default), a required group (nested groups too), a CA file and a button label. The server finds the person with the service account, then checks their password by binding as them; the password is never stored or logged. Plain ldap:// without STARTTLS is refused unless LDAP_ALLOW_INSECURE=1. See authentication.
• Sign in with Microsoft (#292, [#300]): work, school and personal Microsoft (Entra ID) accounts, with OAUTH_MICROSOFT_CLIENT_ID and OAUTH_MICROSOFT_CLIENT_SECRET. OAUTH_MICROSOFT_TENANT chooses who may sign in: organizations (default), common, consumers, or one school's tenant ID or domain. Accounts are keyed on Microsoft's tenant and object IDs, never on email.
• Agreeing to the terms (#277, [#297]): signing up, with a password, Google, GitHub, Facebook, Microsoft or a directory account, requires agreeing to the terms of service and privacy policy, and the version and time are recorded. Existing accounts are asked to agree on their next visit; until they do they can still read, export, change account settings, delete their account and sign out, but not save. Existing API keys keep working.
• Cached downloads (#204, [#295]): a timeline's .ochx or .och download is built once per revision and kept, so the next one starts at once (a 200,000-moment .ochx: 2.6 s → 0.46 s). Access is checked on every download. The cache lives on disk or in an S3-compatible bucket, keeps within EXPORT_CACHE_MAX_BYTES (2 GiB by default) by removing the least recently downloaded, and EXPORT_CACHE_PUBLIC_URL can send public timelines' downloads to a file server or CDN. Debian and RPM servers start caching in /var/cache/openchronology/exports on upgrade; EXPORT_CACHE=off turns it off.
• Font sizes in the timeline theme (#267, [#298]): Timeline theme 2 adds Label size and Measure size (75%–200%), and the layout makes room rather than overlapping. Timelines using version 1 are unchanged; the plugin library offers Update to v2.
• A sitemap for every public timeline (#287, [#294]): /sitemap.xml is now an index of paged sitemaps listing all public timelines and profiles with their last changes, not just the latest 45,000.

Changed

• Turning a sign-in provider off (#301, [#302]): OAUTH_<NAME>_ENABLED=false hides Google, GitHub, Facebook or Microsoft while keeping its credentials, for example while an app review is pending.
• The footer is centred and links to the GitHub repository (#276, [#291]).

Fixed

• The large-timeline .och conversion is now covered by a test against the real converter (#296, [#299]). The error reported there came from an outdated local build; released servers were not affected.

Upgrading

Install the new package and run openchronology-migrate. New settings, all optional: LDAP_*, OAUTH_MICROSOFT_*, OAUTH_<NAME>_ENABLED, EXPORT_CACHE*. See administration.

Downloads

The assets below are built from this tag by the release workflow. SHA256SUMS.txt lists their checksums. They're the same set as v0.8.1: desktop apps for Windows, macOS and Linux; server packages for Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Rocky Linux, FreeBSD, macOS (Homebrew) and Windows; the offline HTML files; and the source archives.

OpenChronology is free software under the GNU GPL version 3. It comes with no warranty.