CommunitySolidServer/RELEASE_NOTES.md

Community Solid Server release notes

v4.0.0

New features

• The server can be started with a new parameter to automatically generate accounts and pods, for more info see here.

Configuration changes

You might need to make changes to your v3 configuration if you use a custom config.

The @context needs to be updated to https://linkedsoftwaredependencies.org/bundles/npm/@solid/community-server/^4.0.0/components/context.jsonld.

The following changes pertain to the imports in the default configs:

• ...

The following changes are relevant for v3 custom configs that replaced certain features.

• ...

Interface changes

These changes are relevant if you wrote custom modules for the server that depend on existing interfaces.

• The output of parseContentType in HeaderUtil was changed to include parameters.
• PermissionReaders take an additional modes parameter as input.
• The ResourceStore function resourceExists has been renamed to hasResource and has been moved to a separate ResourceSet interface.
• Several ModesExtractors PermissionBasedAuthorizer now take a ResourceSet as constructor parameter.

v3.0.0

New features

• The Identity Provider now uses the webid scope as required for Solid-OIDC.
• The VoidLocker can be used to disable locking for development/testing purposes. This can be enabled by changing the /config/util/resource-locker/ import to debug-void.json
• Added support for setting a quota on the server. See the config/quota-file.json config for an example.
• An official docker image is now built on each version tag and published at https://hub.docker.com/r/solidproject/community-server.
• Added support for N3 Patch.
• It is now possible to customize arguments to the community-solid-server command, which enables passing custom variables to configurations and setting new default values.
• The AppRunner functions have changed to require Components.js variables. This is important for anyone who starts the server from code.
• When logging in, a consent screen will now provide information about the client.

Data migration

The following actions are required if you are upgrading from a v2 server and want to retain your data.

Due to changes in the keys used by the IDP, you will need to delete the stored keys and sessions. If you are using a file backend, delete the .internal/idp/ folder in your data folder and restart the server. This will not delete the user accounts, but users will have to log in again.

Configuration changes

You might need to make changes to your v2 configuration if you use a custom config.

The @context needs to be updated to https://linkedsoftwaredependencies.org/bundles/npm/@solid/community-server/^3.0.0/components/context.jsonld.

The following changes pertain to the imports in the default configs:

• A new configuration option needs to be imported:
  • /app/variables/default.json contains everything related to parsing CLI arguments and assigning values to variables.

The following changes are relevant for v2 custom configs that replaced certain features.

• Conversion has been simplified so most converters are part of the conversion chain:
  • /util/representation-conversion/default.json
• The IDP settings have changed to support the latest Solid-OIDC draft.
  • /identity/handler/provider-factory/identity.json
• Requests targeting the OIDC library now use a separate handler.
  • /http/handler/default.json
  • /identity/handler/default.json
• The architecture of IDP interaction handlers has completely changed to improve modularity
  • /identity/handler/interaction/*
  • /identity/registration/*

Interface changes

These changes are relevant if you wrote custom modules for the server that depend on existing interfaces.

• TypedRepresentationConverter function signatures changed and base functionality moved to BaseTypedRepresentationConverter.
• Many changes to several components related to the IDP. This includes the HTML templates.

v2.0.0

New features

• Pod owners always have Control access to resources stored in their Pod.
• The server now offers a one-time setup upon first boot. This can be accessed by going to /setup. Configurations with a persistent backend enforce setup before the server can be used, preventing unintended modifications in the backend. These have corresponding *-no-setup.json files where setup is disabled, so the pre-v2.0 behavior is still available.
• ETag, Last-Modified, If-None-Match, and related conditional headers are supported.
• PATCHing containers is now supported.
• PUT/POST requests with empty bodies are supported.
• WebACL authorization supports groups.
• IDP components (registration, login, etc.) fully support JSON input and output.
• There is a new configuration sparql-file-storage.json to have a SPARQL backend with file storage. sparql-file-storage.json.
• A server can be set up to restrict access to IDP components using WebACL. A consequence of this is that IDP components are only accessible using a trailing slash. E.g., /idp/register/ works, /idp/register will error.

Configuration changes

You might need to make changes to your v1 configuration if you use a custom config.

The following changes pertain to the imports in the default configs:

• There are 2 new configuration options that for which a valid option needs to be imported:
  • /app/setup determines how and if setup should be enabled.
  • /identity/access determines if IDP access (e.g., registration) should be restricted
• The /app/init/default.json configuration no longer initializes the root container. This behaviour has been moved to the other options for /app/init.
• /ldp/permissions changed to /ldp/modes and only has a default option now.

The following changes are relevant for v1 custom configs that replaced certain features. The path indicates which JSON-LD files were impacted by the change.

• IdentityProviderHttpHandler and InteractionRoute arguments have changed substantially.
  • /identity/handler/default.json
  • /identity/handler/interaction/*
  • /identity/registration/*.
• All internal storage is now stored in the /.internal/ container.
  • /storage/key-value/resource-store.json.
• Patching related classes have changed.
  • /storage/middleware/stores/patching.json.
• BasicRequestParser now needs a conditionsParser argument.
  • /ldp/handler/components/request-parser.json.
• LinkTypeParser has been renamed to LinkRelParser and now takes mappings as input.
  • /ldp/metadata-parser/*
• ComposedAuxiliaryStrategy isRootRequired has been renamed to requiredInRoot.
  • /util/auxiliary/strategies/acl.json.
• Many changes to authentication and authorization structure.
  • Config /ldp/authentication/* and /ldp/authorization/*.
• All HttpHandlers have been changed.
  • /app/setup/handlers/setup.json
  • /http/handler/default.json
  • /identity/handler/default.json
  • /ldp/handler/default.json.

v1.1.0

New features

• The ConstantConverter can now filter on media type using the enabledMediaRanges and disabledMediaRanges options. That way, the server can be configured to bypass a default UI when accessing images or PDF documents. (https://github.com/solid/community-server/discussions/895, https://github.com/solid/community-server/pull/925)

v1.0.0

First release of the Community Solid Server.