[shifter-users] [ANNOUNCE] v0.10.0 WC release candidate

[Antoine Martin]

Hi,

Sorry about the long wait, this release has seen a number of important
improvements which needed time to settle.
You can find all the beta packages here:
http://shifter.devloop.org.uk/beta/

Unless any major showstopper bugs are found in the next week or so, this
version will become the final 0.10.0
Please give it a whirl if you can.

The most noticable changes are:
 * The server can now be re-started at any time without affecting the
sessions it controls
 * RDP support for exporting Windows displays
 * Much better (rewritten) sound support using GStreamer
 * MacOSX: server support, RDP, PowerPC builds
 * Better diagnostic messages and error reporting
 * Many bug fixes, better platform compatibility support

Thanks!
Antoine



================================================================================
Release Notes:

1) Protocol specific enhancements:
* Functional RDP support.
* VNC: use new vncpasswd on server to generate password values. Patch
has been merged upstream in TigerVNC.
* VNC support enhancements: show host in window name, detect client
process messages and act accordingly, try to prevent alert popups.
* SSH X11 Display forwarding: better detection of failures.
* SSH: try to detect if SSH allows X11Forwarding on unix platforms.
* Xpra: builds for version 0.0.7.15 depend on Xvfb only (as Xvnc does
not work well enough as an Xvfb alternative yet).
* Xpra: added switch to disable PulseAudio support (since we now provide
our own sound system)

2) User Interface:
* Sound support via gstreamer and RTSP, which is close to a hundred
times more efficient than pulseaudio over TCP (not available on MacOSX).
Also allows us to export the sound from regular X11 sessions.
* Notifications: messages should be more informative, and last longer in
case of errors.
* Prevent multiple connection windows from swarming the user, and remove
them if the server has already disconnected.
* New application icons to try to blend it to each platform's default
themes.
* Disabled SVG icons as the MacOSX libraries do not support this format.
* Use menu mode by default (dialog mode can be enabled via configuration
panel).
* More keyboard shortcuts: enter to submit password form, escape to
close any form.

3) Platform specific changes:
* MacOSX server support embedded in the applet and avoid "double dock icon".
* MacOSX and Windows builds now include full version information in
"About" box.
* MacOSX: detect if the application's location has changed and update
paths accordingly.
* MacOSX: basic SSH server support, exporting the default X11 applications.
* MacOSX: support ARD (Apple Remote Desktop), which is a VNC server.
* MacOSX: bundle newer versions of nxproxy and TigerVNC.
* Windows: detect if a VNC server is already running and offer to stop it.
* *nix: provide location for system wide sane defaults in /etc
* *nix: better parsing for utmp entries found via "last -F"
* *nix: detect X11 session name using "DESKTOP_SESSION"

4) General:
* Try to detect firewalls blocking access to sessions and report to user.
* Use daemon wrapper to ensure all session utilities can outlive the
server process and be picked up again after a restart.
* Each session gets is own dbus instance.
* Moved all the session files to the same location. (for all protocols)
* More efficient loading, lazy initialization of system objects.
* Bookmarks now record the protocol settings too (screen_size, bit
depth, etc..)
* Split the code to better ensure separation of client and server side
classes. (and load faster)
* Pre-launch failures: give up only if the failures happened recently.
* Try harder to detect local servers and try to use a local link for those.

5) Security:
* Try harder to remove passwords in the log files, does not apply to
debug mode.
* Now using a separate XAUTHORITY file per session (except when SELinux
is enabled)

6) Release:
* CentOS, Fedora 14 and Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat builds.
* MacOSX PowerPC build now provided.
* Fixed support for Debian Lenny (and others) which do not have gio.
(can be tested with --no-gio)