v2.0.0

First of all I am very happy to announce the second major version of Etherpad. During the course of the last months we have updated all dependencies, cleaned up some of the old Etherpad code and converted most of the things to Typescript.

Compatibility changes

• Socket io has been updated to 4.7.5. This means that the json.send function won't work anymore and needs to be changed to .emit('message', myObj)
• Deprecating npm version 6 in favor of pnpm: We have made the decision to switch to the well established pnpm (https://pnpm.io/). It works by symlinking dependencies into a global directory allowing you to have a cleaner and more reliable environment.
• Introducing Typescript to the Etherpad core: Etherpad core logic has been rewritten in Typescript allowing for compiler checking of errors.
• Rewritten Admin Panel: The Admin panel has been rewritten in React and now features a more pleasant user experience. It now also features an integrated pad searching with sorting functionality.

Notable enhancements and fixes

• Bugfixes

  • Live Plugin Manager: The live plugin manager caused problems when a plugin had depdendencies defined. This issue is now resolved.

• Enhancements

  • pnpm Workspaces: In addition to pnpm we introduced workspaces. A clean way to manage multiple bounded contexts like the admin panel or the bin folder.
  • Bin folder: The bin folder has been moved from the src folder to the root folder. This change was necessary as the contained scripts do not represent core functionality of the user.
  • Starting Etherpad: Etherpad can now be started with a single command: pnpm run prod in the root directory.
  • Installing Etherpad: Etherpad no longer symlinks itself in the root directory. This is now also taken care by pnpm, and it just creates a node_modules folder with the src directory`s ep_etherpad-lite folder
  • Plugins can now be installed simply via the command: pnpm run install-plugins first-plugin second-plugin or if you want to install from path you can do:
    pnpm run install-plugins --path ../path-to-plugin

This wouldn't be possible as a single developer. Special thanks to:

• @HMarzban for jumping in to update socket io
• @Gared for implementing and fixing the Live Plugin Manager
• @JannikStreek for adapting the Etherpad Docker build process, introducing PNPM workspaces and separating the bin and src folder
• @AugustinMauroy for the roadmap and inspiration of modernizing the Etherpad structure

v1.9.7

Notable enhancements and fixes

• Added Live Plugin Manager: Plugins are now installed into a separate folder on the host system. This folder is called plugin_packages.
  That way the plugins are separated from the normal etherpad installation.
• Make repairPad.js more verbose
• Fixed favicon not being loaded correctly

v1.9.6

Notable enhancements and fixes

• Prevent etherpad crash when update server is not reachable
• Use npm@6 in Docker build
• Fix setting the log level in settings.json

Merry Christmas and an awesome start in 2024 from the Etherpad team 🌲🎁

v1.9.5

Compability changes

• This version deprecates NodeJS16 as it reached its end of life and won't receive any updates. So to get started with Etherpad v1.9.5 you need NodeJS 18 and above.
• The bundled windows NodeJS version has been bumped to the current LTS version 20.

Notable enhancements and fixes

• The support for the tidy program to tidy up HTML files has been removed. This decision was made because it hasn't been updated for years and also caused an incompability when exporting a pad with Abiword.

v1.9.4

Compability changes

• Log4js has been updated to the latest version. As it involved a bump of 6 major version a lot has changed since then. Most notably the console appender has been deprecated. You can find out more about it here

Notable enhancements and fixes

• Fix for MySQL: The logger calls were incorrectly configured leading to a crash when e.g. somebody uses a different encoding than standard MySQL encoding.

1.9.3

Compability changes

• express-rate-limit has been bumped to 7.0.0: This involves the breaking change that "max: 0"
  in the importExportRateLimiting is set to always trigger. So set it to your desired value.
  If you haven't changed that value in the settings.json you are all set.

Notable enhancements and fixes

• Bugfixes

  • Fix etherpad crashing with mongodb database

• Enhancements

  • Add surrealdb database support. You can find out more about this database here.
  • Make sqlite faster: The sqlite library has been switched to better-sqlite3. This should lead to better performance.

1.9.2

Notable enhancements and fixes

• Security

  • Enable session key rotation: This setting can be enabled in the settings.json. It changes the signing key for the cookie authentication in a fixed interval.

• Bugfixes

  • Fix appendRevision when creating a new pad via the API without a text.

• Enhancements

  • Bump JQuery to version 3.7
  • Update elasticsearch connector to version 8

Compatibility changes

• No compability changes as JQuery maintains excellent backwards compatibility.

For plugin authors

• Please update to JQuery 3.7. There is an excellent deprecation guide over here. Version 3.1 to 3.7 are relevant for the upgrade.

1.9.1

Notable enhancements and fixes

• Security

  • Limit requested revisions in timeslider and export to head revision. (affects v1.9.0)

• Bugfixes

  • revisions in CHANGESET_REQ (timeslider) and export (txt, html, custom)
    are now checked to be numbers.
  • bump sql for audit fix

• Enhancements

  • Add keybinding meta-backspace to delete to beginning of line
  • Fix automatic Windows build via GitHub Actions
  • Enable docs to be build cross platform thanks to asciidoctor

Compatibility changes

• tests: drop windows 7 test coverage & use chrome latest for admin tests
• Require Node 16 for Etherpad and target Node 20 for testing

1.9.0

Notable enhancements and fixes

• Windows build:
  • The bundled node.exe was upgraded from v12 to v16.
  • The bundled node.exe is now a 64-bit executable. If you need the 32-bit
    version you must download and install Node.js yourself.
• Improvements to login session management:
  • express_sid cookies and sessionstorage:* database records are no longer
    created unless requireAuthentication is true (or a plugin causes them to
    be created).
  • Login sessions now have a finite lifetime by default (10 days after
    leaving).
  • sessionstorage:* database records are automatically deleted when the login
    session expires (with some exceptions that will be fixed in the future).
  • Requests for static content (e.g., /robots.txt) and special pages (e.g.,
    the HTTP API, /stats) no longer create login session state.
• The following settings from settings.json are now applied as expected (they
  were unintentionally ignored before):
  • padOptions.lang
  • padOptions.showChat
  • padOptions.userColor
  • padOptions.userName
• HTTP API:
  • Fixed the return value of getText when called with a specific revision.
  • Fixed a potential attribute pool corruption bug with
    copyPadWithoutHistory.
  • Mappings created by createGroupIfNotExistsFor are now removed from the
    database when the group is deleted.
  • Fixed race conditions in the setText, appendText, and restoreRevision
    functions.
  • Added an optional authorId parameter to appendText,
    copyPadWithoutHistory, createGroupPad, createPad, restoreRevision,
    setHTML, and setText, and bumped the latest API version to 1.3.0.
• Fixed a crash if the database is busy enough to cause a query timeout.
• New /health endpoint for getting information about Etherpad's health (see
  draft-inadarei-api-health-check-06).
• Docker now uses the new /health endpoint for health checks, which avoids
  issues when authentication is enabled. It also avoids the unnecessary creation
  of database records for managing browser sessions.
• When copying a pad, the pad's records are copied in batches to avoid database
  timeouts with large pads.
• Exporting a large pad to .etherpad format should be faster thanks to bulk
  database record fetches.
• When importing an .etherpad file, records are now saved to the database in
  batches to avoid database timeouts with large pads.

For plugin authors

• New expressPreSession server-side hook.
• Pad server-side hook changes:
  • padCheck: New hook.
  • padCopy: New srcPad and dstPad context properties.
  • padDefaultContent: New hook.
  • padRemove: New pad context property.
• The db property on Pad objects is now public.
• New getAuthorId server-side hook.
• New APIs for processing attributes: ep_etherpad-lite/static/js/attributes
  (low-level API) and ep_etherpad-lite/static/js/AttributeMap (high-level
  API).
• The import server-side hook has a new ImportError context property.
• New exportEtherpad and importEtherpad server-side hooks.
• The handleMessageSecurity and handleMessage server-side hooks have a new
  sessionInfo context property that includes the user's author ID, the pad ID,
  and whether the user only has read-only access.
• The handleMessageSecurity server-side hook can now be used to grant write
  access for the current message only.
• The init_<pluginName> server-side hooks have a new logger context
  property that plugins can use to log messages.
• Prevent infinite loop when exiting the server
• Bump dependencies

Compatibility changes

• Node.js v14.15.0 or later is now required.
• The default login session expiration (applicable if requireAuthentication is
  true) changed from never to 10 days after the user leaves.

For plugin authors

• The client context property for the handleMessageSecurity and
  handleMessage server-side hooks is deprecated; use the socket context
  property instead.
• Pad server-side hook changes:
  • padCopy:
    • The originalPad context property is deprecated; use srcPad instead.
    • The destinationID context property is deprecated; use dstPad.id
      instead.
  • padCreate: The author context property is deprecated; use the new
    authorId context property instead. Also, the hook now runs asynchronously.
  • padLoad: Now runs when a temporary Pad object is created during import.
    Also, it now runs asynchronously.
  • padRemove: The padID context property is deprecated; use pad.id
    instead.
  • padUpdate: The author context property is deprecated; use the new
    authorId context property instead. Also, the hook now runs asynchronously.
• Returning true from a handleMessageSecurity hook function is deprecated;
  return 'permitOnce' instead.
• Changes to the src/static/js/Changeset.js library:
  • The following attribute processing functions are deprecated (use the new
    attribute APIs instead):
    • attribsAttributeValue()
    • eachAttribNumber()
    • makeAttribsString()
    • opAttributeValue()
  • opIterator(): Deprecated in favor of the new deserializeOps() generator
    function.
  • appendATextToAssembler(): Deprecated in favor of the new opsFromAText()
    generator function.
  • newOp(): Deprecated in favor of the new Op class.
• The AuthorManager.getAuthor4Token() function is deprecated; use the new
  AuthorManager.getAuthorId() function instead.
• The exported database records covered by the exportEtherpadAdditionalContent
  server-side hook now include keys like ${customPrefix}:${padId}:*, not just
  ${customPrefix}:${padId}.
• Plugin locales should overwrite core's locales Stale
• Plugin locales overwrite core locales

1.8.18

Notable enhancements and fixes

• Upgraded ueberDB to fix a regression with CouchDB (#5532).