03. September 2024
Release of Bugzilla 5.2, 5.0.4.1, and 4.4.14
posted by Dave Miller - Bugzilla Project Lead
This has been a long time coming. Just over a year since we announced the new nonprofit to manage Bugzilla, we finally have a set of releases to show for it. Our only excuse is that the lead developer is a volunteer, has been working almost (but not quite) alone on it, and still has to juggle his normal paying job. A little more about what can be done about that below. First let’s get to the big news!
The Releases
Here’s what we’re releasing today:
4.4.14 – The 4.4 branch has been on life support for a LONG time (it was initially released in 2013!!!). It supports outdated OSes that are hard to find or install, let alone test for these days, and we’ve been itching to drop it for a long time. But our support policy says that we have to support it for 4 months after the following two major releases. The next major release after 4.4 was 5.0, and there have been no major releases after that until today. That four month countdown to End-of-Life starts NOW. This will be the final release of the 4.4 branch (barring any additional security issues being found in the next 4 months).
5.0.4.1 – Why 5.0.4.1 when there’s a 5.0.6 release? Well, if you paid attention to the change logs, 5.0.5 and 5.0.6 contained a massive schema change, as well as reformatting almost all of the Perl code in the source, both of which are a violation of our support policy for a stable branch (a new-to-the-process release manager pushed the release out not realizing that, and by the time we caught it, it was too late). A lot of people noticed this and never upgraded to 5.0.5 or 5.0.6, since they didn’t contain any security fixes. 5.0.4.1 will give those people additional fixes for 5.0.4 without forcing them to pick up those schema and code reformatting changes. Additional updates to the 5.0 branch from now on will continue from 5.0.4.2 and onward.
5.2 – This is our new stable release, and starts the 4 month countdown for discontinuing the 4.4 branch. 5.2 is forked from the 5.0 branch after 5.0.6, and will contain those schema and code formatting changes from 5.0.5 and 5.0.6 in it. So if you did upgrade to 5.0.6, 5.2 will be equivalent to a point upgrade for you. Those schema changes should have caused a major release to happen anyway, so this is just fixing the numbering problem with that release (i.e. 5.0.5 should have been called 5.2 to begin with). Note that if you are using the 5.1.x development releases, those did NOT feed into this, and 5.2 would actually be a downgrade for you.
5.3.3 – In order to avoid confusion with 5.2 above, the 5.1 branch has been retroactively renumbered to 5.3. It is also basically dead, as we’ve put all of our resources into finishing off the Harmony release (see 5.9.1 below). We’re going to encourage people on 5.1.x/5.3.x to move to Harmony, but you’ll want to be mindful of the release blockers first before you make the jump. There are some features in 5.1.x/5.3.x that were implemented differently in Harmony, and the code to migrate the related data may or may not work yet (if the feature in question is listed on the release blockers and you use it, you’ll want to wait for now). Even though this branch is dead, we’re put out this release with the current batch of security fixes so you aren’t left high and dry before Harmony is ready for you.
5.9.1 – This is the first official release off the Harmony branch, and is classified as a developer preview release, not for production use. This is what will eventually be Bugzilla 6. The code is mostly good enough to use right now, but there are still showstoppers to be able to fully release it as a production release. There are also a few gotchas when upgrading from older versions of Bugzilla. If you’re interested in helping make Bugzilla 6 happen, that list of showstoppers is here. We are hoping to have Bugzilla 6 in release candidate stage (or at least in beta) within the next few months.
Download
Bugzilla is available at:
https://www.bugzilla.org/download/
Release Notes & Changes
Before installing or upgrading, you should read the Release Notes for this version of Bugzilla:
It is VERY IMPORTANT to read the Release Notes if you are upgrading from one major version to another (like 4.4.x to 5.0.x).
You can also get a link to see a list of all changes between your version of Bugzilla and the current version of Bugzilla on the above pages.
Staying up-to-date with Bugzilla
You can see the latest updates from the Bugzilla Project and the status of Bugzilla development on the News page of the Bugzilla website.
You can also follow us on our social media:
Live streaming content
Bugzilla now has a Twitch channel! We will be streaming things like work sessions, triage parties, and tutorial content. Can’t make the scheduled live streams? You can watch the Video On Demand recordings on our YouTube channel. Regular streams are at 1pm US Eastern time on Saturdays. We may also stream at other random times.
Report Bugs
If you find a bug in Bugzilla, please report it!
Support
You can ask questions for free on the mailing lists (or in online chat rooms) about Bugzilla, or you can hire a paid consultant to help you out:
Immediate Help Wanted
- Section 508 Compliance Audit. There are a number of US government agencies who use Bugzilla internally (NASA is a publicly visible example). New US government projects have to comply with the new accessibility guidelines in Section 508 of the Communications Act, so if we want them to be able to upgrade we need to comply (at least in our newer versions). See https://section508.gov/. There is a template for a compliance statement at https://www.section508.gov/sell/vpat/. I would love to get a volunteer (or a company who can sponsor someone?) who could audit the 5.2 and harmony branches for compliance, file bugs for things that are violations, and figure out how much of the VPAT we can actually provide at this point. Even if we’re not compliant yet (I suspect we aren’t) I would love to be able to provide a statement with the 5.2 release saying how compliant we are, and listing what’s left to be fixed to make us compliant. See also Bug 1785941. Some work has been done on this (as you can see in the dependent bugs to that one) but it still needs help.
Ongoing Help Wanted
You can always find a list of ways to contribute to Bugzilla on our Contributing page. A few highlights with additional details:
- Donate Money. Now that we have a legal entity capable of paying developers, we need money to pay them with (and also cover our server hosting expenses). See our Donation page to learn how!
- Bug Triage! As you probably noticed from the lack of updates around here in a while, the bug list hasn’t been getting paid much attention to, either. Part of getting this project moving again means re-triaging the existing bug reports. Some of them are really ancient and may not even apply to the current code-base anymore. I’m going to have a blog post coming in the next week or two with information on this topic (specifics for how to help with it), so keep an eye out for that post!
- Code! Once we get the above triage moving, there will be bugs to fix! Bugzilla is an Open Source project, and anyone can contribute! We also have a relatively small user base compared to some of the big projects out there, so the amount of development we’ll be able to fund internally from our donations will still be limited. It will probably make better sense for us to use our internal developers (once we have money to pay some) to review patches and coach external contributors, instead of having them directly producing code.
- Paid Developer Time. If you are a business that makes use of Bugzilla, and has a staff person responsible for maintaining your Bugzilla installation, and that person is willing, please consider officially sponsoring that person to help with upstream Bugzilla development for at least a few hours per week. Most of our lack of development lately has happened because the last few companies that used to do that stopped providing developer time during the economic downturn a few years back (either laid off said person or pulled them away to work on other things), and they haven’t returned. The developers we have currently (until we get money donated as listed above) are all volunteer, and most of them are struggling to find time to work on it.
In Conclusion
We have a lot of excitement ahead of us with the first developer preview of Bugzilla 6, and the new opportunities in store for us with a real business entity to support the project now. Come find us in any of our chat rooms (links are in the footer of our website alongside the social media links) or drop in on our developers mailing list if you’d like to help.
About Bugzilla
Bugzilla is a “Defect Tracking System” or “Bug-Tracking System.” Defect Tracking Systems allow individuals or groups of developers to keep track of outstanding bugs in their product effectively. Most commercial defect-tracking software vendors charge enormous licensing fees. Despite being “free”, Bugzilla has many features its expensive counterparts lack. Consequently, Bugzilla has quickly become a favorite of thousands of organizations across the globe, and is widely regarded as one of the top defect-tracking systems available.
See https://www.bugzilla.org/about/ for more details.