[Smartfrog-users] SmartFrog 3.12.014 is out!

[Steve Loughran]

I'm pleased to announce the release of SmartFrog 3.12.014; the artifacts 
are up under
https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=87384&package_id=108447&release_id=559511
This is probably going to be the release for 2007, unless we have an 
urge to do one just before christmas to keep the release schedule up. 
There's no major changes, just bug fixes, better documentation for some 
things, and a javadocs RPM. Javadocs go into 
/usr/share/javadocs/smartfrog-${version-number} ; there may be some 
changes under there in future releases.

One thing we have done is tightened the security of the RPM-installed 
SmartFrog so that the logs directory is now only writeable by SmartFrog. 
This would stop anyone from running SmartFrog unless they had the right 
privileges, so the log to file code is enhanced to fall back gracefully 
if the configured log directory is not writeable -it switches to 
java.io.tmpdir in this situation. Note that locking down the log 
directories does not make your system secure if your daemon is accepting 
incoming calls from unauthenticated callers; it merely hides the problems.

As usual, please don't hesitate to provide feedback, bug reports, test 
cases, improvements to the documentation, etc.

Early roadmap of pending changes
====================

I'm going to mention some imminent enhancements for anyone who wants to 
check out the repository and get involved
-migration to OSGi. This is a merge in of a branch that is already in 
the repository; we will switch to OSGi to manage classpaths. This will 
improve classloading, isolation of classes, and other things, so we are 
looking forward to this change.

-There is a restlet client component being put together as part of some 
amazon S3/EC2 support. The client will be general purpose and let you 
declare which HTTP verbs to apply during startup, pings and termination 
-you can issue a list if you want for each action. I want to add some 
XPath extraction of result text too. Query parameters and headers can be 
set by a list. The result will be a component that can manage the 
lifecycle of a remote resource (PUT on start, GET on ping, DELETE on 
termination), or issue complex HTTP operations against remote resources, 
and turn the result into attributes that can be picked up by other 
components. Participation in features and functionality of this code is 
encouraged, especially from anyone who is deploying in the S3/EC2 farm.

-steve



SmartFrog 3.12.014
======================

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 3.12.014; built from revision 5649
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.
* Database: components to issue database commands, and deploy HSLDB and 
MySQL.
* 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
* Testing: Distributed JUnit and component testing with SFUnit.
* WWW: deployment of WAR and EAR files to application servers. 
deploy-by-copy
  is provided for all application servers that support it, and sample 
templates
  are provided to start and stop Tomcat and JBoss. The Jetty component can
  configure and deploy individual servlets, eliminating much of the 
need for WAR
  files and application servers.
* 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 1.5 and Ant 1.7 to build. The izpack and source 
.zip and
.tar.gz distributions include a source tree adequate to build the
entire system. To build a later release, please follow the instructions at
  http://sourceforge.net/svn/?group_id=87384
to check out smartfrog/trunk/core from our repository.

This release was built with revision 5645 of the repository, which
is available under the SVN branch
https://smartfrog.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/smartfrog/tags/release3.12.014

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
==========================

There are no major changes in this release, only ongoing bug fixes and minor
improvements, and build process tuning.

The RPMs have been improved;  the javadocs for the core JARs are 
provided as their own RPM.

** Bug
    * [SFOS-560] - -x bit is set in /etc/sysconfig/smartfrog
    * [SFOS-561] - sfResolveHereNonlocal does not delegate to 
sfResolveHere when
      the attribute is not in the context and the dns component overrides
      sfResolveHere to give a default value
    * [SFOS-564] - regression in RunShell; list operations causing NPW
    * [SFOS-572] - default for sfDump does not handle references with 
repeated
      names correctly
    * [SFOS-574] - jjdocs target fails on CruiseControl
    * [SFOS-575] - common.xml javadoc fails if there is no source

** Improvement
    * [SFOS-265] - bits of smartfrog arent forwarding
      SmartFrogResolutionExceptions consistently
    * [SFOS-501] - Ant component needs more tests
    * [SFOS-548] - Add SFNULL to schemas template
    * [SFOS-551] - add Xalan and JDom to the XML component
    * [SFOS-552] - review XML component source+build; add in xalan and JDOM
    * [SFOS-556] - move up to httpunit 1.6.2 for testing www componentry
    * [SFOS-569] - Add attribute to filter the output of positive searches.
      Useful to remove the "echoExit command" from the standard output .
    * [SFOS-573] - logToFile when failing to create a log file, it 
should try
      java temp dir before failing

** New Feature
    * [SFOS-559] - Create RPMs for the other packages: ant, database, jmx,
      xunit, junit, net, www, quartz
    * [SFOS-568] - Add a component to test the specific OS

** Task
    * [SFOS-129] - incorporate ivy published documentation into the release
      artifacts
    * [SFOS-357] - Move Jetty support up to Jetty6
    * [SFOS-467] - Admin/Debug servlets are no longer in Jetty6; remove the
      components and their tests
    * [SFOS-540] - document the Ant components

** Sub-task
    * [SFOS-473] - Add SSL support with an SSLSocketListener
    * [SFOS-475] - Move realm/security config out of SFJetty and make 
reusable
    * [SFOS-476] - Remove SFJettyAdmin as the servlet is gone
Title: SmartFrog 3.12.014



SmartFrog 3.12.014


  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 3.12.014; built from revision 5649
  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.
  
   Database: components to issue database commands, and deploy HSLDB and MySQL.
  
   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
  
   Testing: Distributed JUnit and component testing with SFUnit.
  
   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.
  
   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
  
  
    smartfrog-anubis
    Anubis partition-aware "tuple space"
  
  
    smartfrog-logging
    Enhanced logging
  


  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 1.5 and Ant 1.7 to build. 




  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 5645 of the repository, which
  is available under the SVN branch
  https://smartfrog.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/smartfrog/tags/release3.12.014



  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/



  The SmartFrog Team



Changes since last release

There are no major changes in this release, only ongoing bug fixes and minor
improvements, and build process tuning. 


The RPMs have been improved;  the javadocs for the core JARs are provided as their own RPM.


        Bug


[SFOS-560] -         -x bit is set in /etc/sysconfig/smartfrog

[SFOS-561] -         sfResolveHereNonlocal does not delegate to sfResolveHere when the attribute is not in the context and the dns component overrides sfResolveHere to give a default value

[SFOS-564] -         regression in RunShell; list operations causing NPW

[SFOS-572] -         default for sfDump does not handle references with repeated names correctly

[SFOS-574] -         jjdocs target fails on CruiseControl

[SFOS-575] -         common.xml javadoc fails if there is no source



        
        Improvement


[SFOS-265] -         bits of smartfrog arent forwarding SmartFrogResolutionExceptions consistently

[SFOS-501] -         Ant component needs more tests

[SFOS-548] -         Add SFNULL to schemas template

[SFOS-551] -         add Xalan and JDom to the XML component

[SFOS-552] -         review XML component source+build; add in xalan and JDOM

[SFOS-556] -         move up to httpunit 1.6.2 for testing www componentry

[SFOS-569] -         Add attribute to filter the output of positive searches. Useful to remove the "echoExit command" from the standard output .

[SFOS-573] -         logToFile when failing to create a log file, it should try java tem dir before failing


    
        New Feature


[SFOS-559] -         Create RPMs for the other packages: ant, database, jmx, xunit, junit, net, www, quartz

[SFOS-568] -         Add a component to test the specific OS


        
        Task


[SFOS-129] -         incorporate ivy published documentation into the release artifacts

[SFOS-357] -         Move Jetty support up to Jetty6

[SFOS-467] -         Admin/Debug servlets are no longer in Jetty6; remove the components and their tests

[SFOS-540] -         document the Ant components



    
        Sub-task


[SFOS-473] -         Add SSL support with an SSLSocketListener

[SFOS-475] -         Move realm/security config out of SFJetty and make reusable

[SFOS-476] -         Remove SFJettyAdmin as the servlet is gone







-------------------------------------------------------------------------
SF.Net email is sponsored by: The Future of Linux Business White Paper
from Novell.  From the desktop to the data center, Linux is going
mainstream.  Let it simplify your IT future.
http://altfarm.mediaplex.com/ad/ck/8857-50307-18918-4_______________________________________________
Smartfrog-users mailing list
Smartfrog-users@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/smartfrog-users