Bump minimum Python version to 3.7

[pylibacl.git] / NEWS.md

# News

## Version 0.6.0

*Sun, 29 Nov 2020*

Major release removing Python 2 support. This allow both code cleanup
and new features, such as:

- Support for pathlib objects in `apply_to` and `has_extended`
  functions when running with Python 3.6 and newer.
- Use of built-in C API functions for bytes/unicode/pathlib conversion
  when dealing with file names, removing custom code (with the
  associated benefits).

Important API changes/bug fixes:

- Initialisation protocol has been changed, to disallow uninitialised
  objects; this means that `__new__` will always create valid objects,
  to prevent the need for checking initialisation status in all code
  paths; this also (implicitly) fixes memory leaks on re-initialisation
  (calling `__init__(…)` on an existing object) and segfaults (!) on
  non-initialised object attribute access. Note ACL re-initialisation is
  tricky and (still) leads to undefined behaviour of existing Entry
  objects pointing to it.
- Fix another bug in ACL re-initialisation where failures would result
  in invalid objects; now failed re-initialisation does not touch the
  original object.
- Restore `__setstate__`/`__getstate__` support on Linux; this was
  inadvertently removed due a typo(!) when adding support for it in
  FreeBSD. Pickle should work again for ACL instances, although not sure
  how stable this serialisation format actually is.
- Additionally, slightly change `__setstate__()` input to not allow
  Unicode, since the serialisation format is an opaque binary format.
- Fix (and change) entry qualifier (which is a user/group ID) behaviour:
  assume/require that uid_t/gid_t are unsigned types (they are with
  glibc, MacOS and FreeBSD at least; the standard doesn't document the
  signedness), and convert parsing and returning the qualifier to behave
  accordingly. The breakage was most apparent on 32-bit architectures,
  in which context the problem was originally reported (see issue #13).

Minor improvements:

- Added a `data` keyword argument to `ACL()`, which allows restoring an
  ACL directly from a serialised form (as given by `__getstate__()`),
  which should simplify some uses cases (`a = ACL(); a.__set
  state__(…)`).
- When available, add the file path to I/O error messages, which should
  lead to easier debugging.
- The test suite has changed to `pytest`, which allows increased
  coverage via parameterisation.

## Version 0.5.4

*released Thu, 14 Nov 2019*

Maintenance release:

- Switch build system to Python 3 by default (can be overridden if
  needed).
- Internal improvements for better cpychecker support.
- Fix compatibility with PyPy.
- Test improvements (both local and on Travis), testing more variations
  (debug, PyPy).
- Improve test coverage, and allow gathering test coverage results.
- Drop support (well, drop testing) for Python lower than 2.7.
- Minor documentation improvements (closes #9, #12).

## Version 0.5.3

*released Thu, 30 Apr 2015*

FreeBSD fixes:

- Enable all FreeBSD versions after 7.x at level 2 (thanks to Garrett
  Cooper).
- Make test suite pass under FreeBSD, which has a stricter behaviour
  with regards to invalid ACLs (which we do exercise in the test suite),
  thanks again to Garret for the bug reports.

## Version 0.5.2

*released Sat, 24 May 2014*

No visible changes release: just fix tests when running under pypy.

## Version 0.5.1

*released Sun, 13 May 2012*

A bug-fix only release. Critical bugs (memory leaks and possible
segmentation faults) have been fixed thanks to Dave Malcolm and his
``cpychecker`` tool. Additionally, some compatibility issues with Python
3.x have been fixed (str() methods returning bytes).

The documentation has been improved and changed from epydoc to sphinx;
note however that the documentation is still auto-generated from the
docstrings.

Project reorganisation: the project home page has been moved from
SourceForge to GitHub.

## Version 0.5

*released Sun, 27 Dec 2009*

Added support for Python 3.x and improved support for Unicode filenames.

## Version 0.4

*released Sat, 28 Jun 2008*

### License


Starting with this version, pylibacl is licensed under LGPL 2.1,
Febryary 1999 or any later versions (see README.rst and COPYING).

### Linux support

A few more Linux-specific functions:

- add the ACL.equiv_mode() method, which will return the equivalent
  octal mode if this is a basic ACL and raise an IOError exception
  otherwise

- add the acl_extended(...) function, which will check if an fd or path
  has an extended ACL

### FreeBSD support

FreeBSD 7.x will have almost all the acl manipulation functions that
Linux has, with the exception of __getstate__/__setstate__. As a
workaround, use the str() and ACL(text=...) methods to pass around
textual representations.

### Interface

At module level there are now a few constants exported for easy-checking
at runtime what features have been compiled in:

- `HAS_ACL_FROM_MODE`, denoting whether the ACL constructor supports
  the `mode=0xxx` parameter

- `HAS_ACL_CHECK`, denoting whether ACL instances support the
  `check()` method

- `HAS_ACL_ENTRY`, denoting whether ACL manipulation is possible and
  the Entry and Permset classes are available

- `HAS_EXTENEDED_CHECK`, denoting whether the `acl_extended()`
  function is supported

- `HAS_EQUIV_MODE`, denoting whether ACL instances support the
  `equiv_mode()` method

### Internals

Many functions have now unittests, which is a good thing.


## Version 0.3

*released Sun, 21 Oct 2007*

### Linux support

Under Linux, implement more functions from libacl:

- add `ACL(mode=...)`, implementing `acl_from_mode`.
- add `ACL.to_any_text()`, implementing `acl_to_any_text`.
- add ACL comparison, using `acl_cmp`.
- add `ACL.check()`, which is a more descriptive function than
  validate.