Every night, the most recent revision of the Greenstone3 source code will be automatically checked out, compiled, and packaged up as an easy-to-use installer and put up on our website. These snapshots will be created for Linux and Windows, and soon, Mac. They will be made available in two formats: as an executable Jar, or as a native binary for your operating system. And to make things even easier, there is also a native binary which comes bundled with Java.
As of today, you no longer have to wait for a release to come out before you can take advantage of a new feature of Greenstone3. All you have to do is install the latest snapshot release, and you will have all the features added up to the previous day.
Nightly snapshot releases were made possible by our move to the open source installer Ant Installer. We have been able to construct a release “kit” for each operating system, which automatically creates releases of Greenstone3 using a number of Ant scripts, the Ant Installer software, and a simple executable wrapper program. Since creating a release is now as easy as running a single command, we decided to let the computer create them nightly.
Not surprisingly, the snapshot releases are likely to have a few flaws. These flaws will have two sources: bugs in the release kits, and bugs in the Greenstone code. As far as the release kits are concerned, in time we aim to eliminate all the bugs, so that they produce robust and usable installers. But as for the Greenstone code, we recognise that the most recent revision of the Greenstone code will always have some “bleeding edges”, so we do not expect to ever eliminate all the bugs there. (If you want thoroughly tested releases, go for one of our regular releases, not a snapshot.)
You can help us to perfect the Greenstone3 release kits by downloading and installing a snapshot release, and telling us if you hit any problems. Go on, be brave!
(For those interested, instructions for getting and using the release kits themselves are available at http://wiki.greenstone.org/wiki/index.php/ReleaseKits.)
Also, keep a look out for Greenstone2 snapshot releases and release kits, which are coming soon.
]]>There is a patch to the 2.80 release, which is a newer version of the main.cfg file with additional configuration for several new languages: malayalam, marathi, tamil, telugu, bulgarian, and sinhalese. To install the patch, download the new main.cfg by right clicking this link and select “save link as” (or “save target as”). Then replace the old main.cfg, which is in the ‘etc’ folder of your Greenstone installation.
]]>Notable Changes
- Language updates to various components:
(Language - Moderator Name)
Russian - Vyacheslav Bakharev
Arabic - Usama Salama, Salih Mustafa
Simplified Chinese - Yan Han
Spanish - Jesus Tramullas
Romanian - Constantinescu Nicolaie
Marathi - Shubhada Nagarkar
- Bug Fixes for Windows Vista
Check for writablity of GSDLHOME before starting GSDL and GLI
Use windows Temp directory for temp files to prevent ‘Access Denied’ errors
We aim to have full Vista compatibility by the next release
- Some new artwork for GLI
We want to ensure that Greenstone works well for you. Please report any
problems to one of the Greenstone mailing lists.
The principal difference between Greenstone2 and Greenstone3 is the format language. Greenstone3 supports more sophisticated XSLT format statements. Right now they are more complex to use, but developments in the pipeline will make it far easier than Greenstone2 in future. (The only other differences are that Greenstone3 still lacks collaging, and collection/document-level authentication.)
There is one known issue. We forgot to ensure that collections built with Greenstone2 are automatically converted when loaded into GLI under Greenstone3. We will add this facility, but for now a manual conversion program is available here; instructions for its use appear in Greenstone3 for Greenstone2 Users.
Greenstone2 will continue to be supported for a long time yet (years), but ultimately we see Greenstone3 replacing it. See the Greenstone3 home page and the Wiki for more details.
]]>This is a stable release. It has been tested extensively.
It contains mainly bug fixes and no new features.
Important changes in this release include (in no particular order):
…and many other improvements and bug fixes
]]>