Re: Announcing LedgerSMB 1.2 feature freeze

["Chris Travers" <..hidden..>]

Hi David;

We haven't finished putting together an upgrade script yet because it
is generally felt that this is easier/less error prone when we are not
writing against a moving target.

If you have a custom translation (in /locale/, not the manual
translations in the software, which will still work normally), we have
no automated solution yet, though perhaps if you post on the list you
may get some pointers.

Other issues involve the new template structure (will have an
automated solution to this), installing Perl modules (will have an
automated solution for Linux/UNIX users), and user account migration
(still discussing how to migrate these best).  Also the new database
structure for the defaults table will need to be changed, but this is
already handled by an sql script.

In general, it is probably easiest/least error prone at the moment to
migrate to 1.1.1 first (by untarring ver the top and logging in) and
then migrating to 1.2 then trying to upgrade everything at once.

However, there are other possible issues to be aware of:
1)  We have substantially tightened data integrity constraints.  We
cannot guarantee that the databases from SQL-Ledger will upgrade
flawlessly because there may be bad data in it.  You would do best to
try the upgrade on a backup database first to make sure it upgrades
smoothly, and mention any problems on the list you might have.  We can
help you sort things out.  You can create a duplicate database by
running createdb with the -T option from the commandline (for example,
createdb -U postgres -T sql_ledger_dataset ledger_smb_dataset) and
then working on the latter.

2)  Right now (new in 1.2), user account passwords have been moved
from crypt() to md5().  This leads to a serious problem:  passwords
cannot be automatically migrated in bulk.    We are working on a
solution to this problem but it may require users to convert their
accounts on first login.  This problem may not be solved for beta 1,
but we expect to have some tool available for the release.

3)  Our security fixes break a few corner cases in terms of working
scenarios.  In particular, you will not be able to run two differen
sessions simultaneously in the same web browser at the same time.

4)  We on this list and others are here to help.  This is a major
upgrade and may not always go smoothly.  If you work on a backup of
your data, we can generally sort things out.   In all cases myself and
other core community members are interested in your feedback and
thoughts, and will do our best to provide some assistance to those
migrating to our project.

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers