Nextcloud 19 RC2 is here - help us test it!

There are some apps missing. So for those that rely on self-installed apps not bundled with NC itself, make sure that they do work fine on NC19 prior to scheduling the update. For me (sorted by priority), these apps do work fine on NC19: two factorā€¦, nextbackup, group folder, polls, bookmarks, preview generator, rainloop. These work fine but they are ā€œnot compatibleā€: Impersonate (marked ā€œofficialā€, yet ā€œnot compatibleā€?!, two factor e-mail. These donā€™t work yet or are not marked compatible yet: group quota, onlyoffice (marked official but incompatible!?) community document server(!), external user authentication, checksums, occ web, ransomwareā€¦ . Of course there are more apps, I only listed those that seem relevant to a wider audience.

I think of all these, the team should ensure that these are available when NC 19 gets released: impersonate, community document server, onlyoffice, external user authentication.

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Not sure if it will be fixed in NC19 final. See https://github.com/nextcloud/server/issues/18662 and Make the translation sanitization optional by ChristophWurst Ā· Pull Request #20976 Ā· nextcloud/server Ā· GitHub

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ONLYOFFICE Connector 4.1.4 app working fine for me (with a standalone OO server)ā€¦

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Hi,

I installed 19. Unfortunately the system did not create the right database entries for contacts. I was not able to add any. The error message I got was something with import of contacts disabled because there was no address book. I manually had to add the system and the admin user to the oc_addressbooks table (compared it to my production environment). From there it seemed to work fine.

regards

realshadow

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I always have a /var/www/testcloud installation on my machine, where I install the beta version. Of course you also need a separate data directory, and a dedicated vhost like testcloud.mydomain.com to let it run separately.

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Does the gallery app work again?

Itā€™s a pity that there is no more information about new features. This is kind of essential for good testing. Well we can look for ourselves, checkout github issues, but that takes more time we could spend in more specific testing.

Please donā€™t forget about the apps. Many are community driven and need support to get updated and tested.

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Could we expect this ā€˜ghostā€™ duplicates bug to be fixed in Photos app?
All Nextcloud 18/19 builds are affected by this bug.

Hi,
Impossible to use the upgrade procedure:

root@demo /var/www/nextcloud_beta/updater # sudo -u www-data php updater.phar
Nextcloud Updater - version: v16.0.3-3-ga0c2b25 dirty

Current version is 19.0.0 beta 5.

No update available.

Nothing to do.

Same issue with the web updater

Regards,
Pascal

Which php version are you using?

root@demo /var/www/nextcloud_beta/updater # php -v
PHP 7.3.14-1~deb10u1 (cli) (built: Feb 16 2020 15:07:23) ( NTS )
Copyright Ā© 1997-2018 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v3.3.14, Copyright Ā© 1998-2018 Zend Technologies
with Zend OPcache v7.3.14-1~deb10u1, Copyright Ā© 1999-2018, by Zend Technologies

On debian 10

Been following since beta 1. Itā€™s a bugfix releaseā€¦ no real new features other then fseek streaming on S3.

So if itā€™s a bugfix release, why is the major version number being incremented?

Just to break compatibility with 3rd party apps for no good reason?

Someone at Nextcloud needs to learn semantic versioning (https://semver.org). Users would be much better served by an 18.1 release than a 19.0 release with no significant user visible differences. Even from a purely marketing perspective, it sends a clearer signal.

Please stop incrementing major version numbers unless thereā€™s a significant reason to do so, like a major new feature, or a change that breaks compatibility for apps.

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We donā€™t know that. New features could be in some apps, or even completely new apps that are not public yet. You can just guess from what you see in the new version and what is on github. And even then, there could be some hidden things, that break compatibility that would justify a new version number.

At this breakneck pace - four major releases 16-17-18-19 in a year and a month - they donā€™t have enough time to even list all the betas released (there was a Beta 7!) forget about its detailsā€¦

We donā€™t know that.

I know we donā€™t know that, I was responding to @Paradox551ā€™s statement.

But even if all the new features are just in apps, that doesnā€™t justify a major version change.

And frankly Nextcloudā€™s lack of communication about features and potential breaking changes in new releases is a problem in and of itself. If app authors really need to update their apps for compatibility, wouldnā€™t users be better served if the authors had the information they needed to update their apps before the Nextcloud release? The silence helps no one.

Every time thereā€™s a major version change, thereā€™s a whole raft of apps that stop working, even though the majority only need their compatibility information updated. This just creates unnecessary havoc.

A sensible versioning system, that actually advertises compatibility for apps would allow most apps to just keep working. e.g. SemVer

Donā€™t get me wrong, I appreciate the rapid addition of features and release cadence, it just needs to be done in a way that isnā€™t so disruptive to users and 3rd party developers.

Not speaking about the apps. The nextcloud/server repository is more or less bug fixes and improvements.

But even with the apps on RC2 I donā€™t see many differences. Your mileage may very.

Regarding apps: None of the major ones have stopped working. Passman, passwords, contacts, calendar, audio, collabora - no issues. I donā€™t know or care about the less known ones.

Last I checked carnet, metadata, raw, checksum - they worked as well.

If you know any apps with compatibility issues then report them. 19 is not released yet! :slight_smile:

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Could you test the Social App and the Gallery App?
Does the Preview Generator App work for videos again?

Iā€™m not testing the Gallery app because itā€™s not supported and I donā€™t use it. Youā€™re welcome to install it though! The beta is open for everyone.

The error you listed for social is likely the MySQL bug here. I use postgresql so it would likely work correctly for me anyway.

Donā€™t use preview generator but video thumbnails are generating correctly for me.

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Not speaking about the apps. The nextcloud/server repository is more or less bug fixes and improvements.

Right, which doesnā€™t give justification for a major version number change for the Nextcloud server. If the apps change, change the version number of the apps.

Regarding apps: None of the major ones have stopped working

My Nextcloud currently reports the following apps as missing updates for V19:

  • AppOrder
  • Checksum
  • Draw.io
  • Activities for shared file downloads
  • Full text search - Files
  • Full text search - Files - Tesseract OCR
  • Link editor
  • Markdown Editor
  • Activities for shared file downloads, visible to all admins
  • Full text search
  • Full text search - Elasticsearch Platform
  • ONLYOFFICE
  • Quota warning
  • Ransomware recovery

Thatā€™s a significant list. An upgrade now would have a major impact for me, so I will not be helping test V19. Now, if thereā€™s really nothing other than bugfixes in the core server, I expect all of these apps to work just fine. However, since those apps donā€™t claim to work with V19, theyā€™re all going to get disabled in an update, or prevent me from wanting to update in the first place. How is that helping anyone?

If the release were marked as V18.1, (and Nextcloud actually followed the semantic versioning contract) then Iā€™d expect most (or all) of those apps to claim to still be compatible without the app author having to issue a new release just to bump the version number.

Yes, I know it hasnā€™t released yet, but this situation happens every time thereā€™s a major version change and there are always a significant number of apps that havenā€™t updated their compatibility info when the release actually happens, sometimes taking months to update because the developers have other jobs. Often many of them require no changes other than the compatibility info. This puts a completely unnecessary burden on app developers and users alike. Iā€™m asking Nextcloud to re-think their versioning system.

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