Kabang; Lucee 5.3 BETA released

news blog
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Kabang? Every Lucee Version is named after a dog that helped mankind. This version is no exception.

Kabang (Visayan for “Spotty”) is a Shepherd/Askal mix from Zamboanga City, Philippines, who became internationally famous and was described as a “hero dog” when she rescued two children from a potentially fatal motorcycle crash.

Main Focus

We’ve been working on improving the Lucee Administrator and debugging output.

Administrator

System Metrics have been added to the start page, giving some insight into the internals of your Lucee engine.

kabang-metrics
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Extension installs/updates are more flexible and more transparent.

Downgrade and upgrade easily.

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Easy access to snapshots and pre-releases.

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Plus a bunch of smaller improvements.

Debugging

Set up your debugging in the administrator.

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Configure the “modern” debugging template.

kabang-debug-modern
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With the “modern template” for Debugging Output you get two new tabs at the end of every page: Metrics and Reference

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kabang-debug02
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kabang-debug03
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Other useful additions to debugging include:

  • showing the location (template and line) of a <cfabort> executed in the code
  • the ability to extend the output in the debug tab very easily with the help of the tag debugAdd

Backward Compatibility

There are some small, potential breaking changes in Lucee 5.3 that may cause you problems.

Minimal Java 8

Java 8 (1.8) is a minimal requirement for Lucee 5.3, best check the Java version in the Homepage of your Lucee Admin BEFORE you update.

Buffer Output

Kabang changes how Lucee handles the output inside a silent block. A silent block is the body of the tag <cfsilent> or the body of a function that has output set to “false”.

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By default that setting is now turned off.

Function ArrayContainsNoCase()

The default behaviour of the third argument of the function ArrayContainsNoCase() has changed from “true” to “false” to be compatible with ACF.

So by default the function no longer makes a substring search.

Try it out!

Get your hands on the 5.3.0.86-BETA; released at May 7, 2018:

And let us know what you think :thinking:

Note, Beta and Release Candidates are a preview for upcoming versions and not ready for production environments.

Part II

https://lucee.daemonite.io/t/kabang-lucee-5-3-beta-improvements-fixes-and-tweaks/3893

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@micstriit has released an awesome Kabang summary on YouTube :slight_smile:

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Roughly how long does it normally take from Beta to production. We are looking to move cf to Lucee from June/July onwards, is it worth waiting for 5.3.

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Assuming all is well is should progress month to month:

  • initial BETA release
  • Release Candidate (RC)
  • General Availability (GA)

So probably looking at July release of Lucee 5.3 I’m guessing.

More notes on the release process here…

https://lucee.daemonite.io/t/2018-release-schedule/3409

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Thanks that’s great, we will wait for 5.3 and maybe test our apps on the 5.3 Release Candidate (RC) in June/July

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I’d suggest start testing now on 5.3, the earlier you find any problems, the more likely they might be addressed before the RC stage.

At RC stage mostly only show stoppers get fixed, otherwise, you’re facing another 2 month cycle between development, RC and release.