[ANN] Release of Bugzilla 5.2, 5.0.4.1, 4.4.14, 5.3.3, and 5.9.1

David Miller justdave at bugzilla.org
Tue Sep 3 18:48:46 UTC 2024 

This has been a *long* time coming. Just over a year since we announced 
the new nonprofit to manage Bugzilla 
<https://www.bugzilla.org/about/zarroboogs>, 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 It supports outdated OSes that are 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 
<https://github.com/bugzilla/harmony/blob/main/RELEASE_BLOCKERS.md>. 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:

  * 4.4.14 Release Notes <https://www.bugzilla.org/releases/4.4.14>
  * 5.0.4.1 Release Notes <https://www.bugzilla.org/releases/5.0.4.1>
  * 5.2 Release Notes <https://www.bugzilla.org/releases/5.2>
  * 5.3.3 Release Info <https://www.bugzilla.org/releases/5.4>
  * 5.9.1 Release Info <https://www.bugzilla.org/releases/6.0>

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 
<https://www.bugzilla.org/blog/2024/09/03/release-of-bugzilla-5.2-5.0.4.1-and-4.4.14/https//www.bugzilla.org/news> 
of the Bugzilla website.

You can also follow us on our social media:

  * Mastodon <https://techhub.social/@bugzilla>
  * Twitter/X <https://x.com/bugzilla>


    Live streaming content

Bugzilla now has a Twitch channel <https://twitch.tv/bugzillaproject>! 
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 
<https://www.youtube.com/@bugzillaproject>. 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 
<https://www.bugzilla.org/contributing/reporting_bugs.html>!


    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:

  * Free Support <https://www.bugzilla.org/support/>
  * Paid Support <https://www.bugzilla.org/support/consulting.html>


    Immediate *Help Wanted*

 1. *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
    <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=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 <http://bugzilla.org/contributing/>. 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
    <https://www.bugzilla.org/donate> 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 
<https://bugzilla.org/> alongside the social media links) or drop in on 
our developers mailing list 
<https://lists.bugzilla.org/listinfo/developers> 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.




[Bugzilla Logo] 	
*Dave Miller*
Project Leader
*Bugzilla Project*
https://bugzilla.org/

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