CHANGES-4x.rst

v4.3.7 (2017-02-08)

fixes:

• slack: compatibility with slackclient > 1.0.5.
• render test fix (thx Sandeep Shantharam)

v4.3.6 (2017-01-28)

fixes:

• regression with Markdown 2.6.8.

v4.3.5 (2016-12-21)

fixes:

• slack: compatibility with slackclient > 1.0.2
• slack: block on reads on RTM (better response time) (Thx Tomer Chachamu)
• slack: fix link names (")
• slack: ignore channel_topic messages (thx Mikhail Sobolev)
• slack: Match ACLs for bots on integration ID
• slack: Process messages from webhook users
• slack: don’t crash when unable to look up alternate prefix
• slack: trm_read refactoring (thx Chris Niemira)
• telegram: fix telegram ID test against ACLs
• telegram: ID as strings intead of ints (thx Pmoranga)
• fixed path to the config template in the startup error message (Thx Ondrej Skopek)

v4.3.4 (2016-10-05)

features:

• Slack: Stream (files) uploads are now supported
• Hipchat: Supports for self-signed server certificates.

fixes:

• Card emulation support for links (Thx Robin Gloster)
• IRC: Character limits fix (Thx lqaz)
• Dependency check fix.

v4.3.3 (2016-09-09)

fixes:

• err references leftovers
• requirements.txt is now standard (you can use git+https:// for example)

v4.3.2 (2016-09-04)

hotfix:

• removed the hard dependency on pytest for the Text backend

v4.3.1 (2016-09-03)

features:

• now the threadpool is of size 10 by default and added a configuration.

fixes:

• fixed importlib/use pip as process (#835) (thx Raphael Wouters)
• if pip is not found, don’t crash errbot
• build_identifier to send message to IRC channels (thx mr Shu)

v4.3.0 (2016-08-10)

v4.3 features

• DependsOn: entry in .plug and self.get_plugin(...) allowing you to make a plugin dependent from another.
• New entry in config.py: PLUGINS_CALLBACK_ORDER allows you to force a callback order on your installed plugins.
• Flows can be shared by a room if you build the flow with FlowRoot(room_flow=True) (thx Tobias Wilken)
• New construct for persistence: with self.mutable(key) as value: that allows you to change by side effect value without bothering to save value back.

v4.3 Miscellaneous changes

• This version work only on Python 3.4+ (see 4.2 announcement)
• Presence.nick is deprecated, simply use presence.identifier.nick instead.
• Slack: Bot identity is automatically added to BOT_ALT_PREFIXES
• The version checker now reports your Python version to be sure to not upgrade Python 2 users to 4.3
• Moved testing to Tox. We used to use a custom script, this improves a lot the local testing setup etc. (Thx Pedro Rodrigues)

v4.3 fixes

• IRC: fixed IRC_ACL_PATTERN
• Slack: Mention callback improvements (Thx Ash Caire)
• Encoding error report was inconsistent with the value checked (Thx Steve Jarvis)
• core: better support for all the types of virtualenvs (Thx Raphael Wouters)

v4.2.2 (2016-06-24)

fixes:

• send_templated fix
• CHATROOM_RELAY fix
• Blacklisting feedback message corrected

v4.2.1 (2016-06-10)

Hotfix

• packaging failure under python2
• better README

v4.2.0 (2016-06-10)

v4.2 Announcement

• Bye bye Python 2 ! This 4.2 branch will be the last to support Python 2. We will maintain bug fixes on it for at least the end of 2016 so you can transition nicely, but please start now !

  Python 3 has been released 8 years ago, now all the major distributions finally have it available, the ecosystem has moved on too. This was not the case at all when we started to port Errbot to Python 3.

  This will clean up a lot of code with ugly if PY2, unicode hacks, 3to2 reverse hacks all over the place and packaging tricks. But most of all it will finally unite the Errbot ecosystem under one language and open up new possibilities as we refrained from using py3 only features.

• A clarification on Errbot’s license has been accepted. The contributors never intended to have the GPL licence be enforced for external plugins. Even if it was not clear it would apply, our new licence exception makes sure it isn’t. Big big thanks for the amazing turnout on this one !

v4.2 New features

• Errbot initial installation. The initial installation has been drastically simplified:

  $ pip install errbot
  $ mkdir errbot; cd errbot
  $ errbot –init
  $ errbot -T >>> <- You are game !!
  

  Not only that but it also install a development directory in there so it now takes only seconds to have an Errbot development environment.

• Part of this change, we also made most of the config.py entries with sane defaults, a lot of those settings were not even relevant for most users.

• cards are now supported on the graphic backend with a nice rendering (errbot -G)

• Hipchat: mentions are now supported.

v4.2 Miscellaneous changes

• Documentation improvements
• Reorganization and rename of the startup files. Those were historically the first ones to be created and their meaning drifted over the years. We had err.py, main.py and errBot.py, it was really not clear what were their functions and why one has been violating the python module naming convention for so long :) They are now bootstrap.py (everything about configuring errbot), cli.py (everything about the errbot command line) and finally core.py (everything about the commands, and dispatching etc…).
• setup.py cleanup. The hacks in there were incorrect.

v4.2 fixes

• core: excpetion formatting was failing on some plugin load failures.
• core: When replacing the prefix ! from the doctrings only real commands get replaced (thx Raphael Boidol)
• core: empty lines on plugins requirements.txt does crash errbot anymore
• core: Better error message in case of malformed .plug file
• Text: fix on build_identifier (thx Pawet Adamcak)
• Slack: several fixes for identifiers parsing, the backend is fully compliant with Errbot’s contract now (thx Raphael Boidol and Samuel Loretan)
• Hipchat: fix on room occupants (thx Roman Forkosh)
• Hipchat: fix for organizations with more than 100 rooms. (thx Naman Bharadwaj)
• Hipchat: fixed a crash on build_identifier

v4.1.3 (2016-05-10)

hotfixes:

• Slack: regression on build_identifier
• Hipchat: regression on build_identifier (query for room is not supported)

v4.1.2 (2016-05-10)

fixes:

• cards for hipchat and slack were not merged.

v4.1.1 (2016-05-09)

fixes:

• Python 2.7 conversion error on err.py.

v4.1.0 (2016-05-09)

v4.1 features

• Conversation flows: Errbot can now keep track of conversations with its users and automate part of the interactions in a state machine manageable from chat. see the flows documentation <http://errbot.io/en/master/user_guide/flow_development/index.html>_ for more information.
• Cards API: Various backends have a "canned" type of formatted response. We now support that for a better native integration with Slack and Hipchat.
• Dynamic Plugins API: Errbot has now an official API to build plugins at runtime (on the fly). see the dynamic plugins doc <http://errbot.io/en/master/user_guide/plugin_development/dynaplugs.html>_
• Storage command line interface: It is now possible to provision any persistent setting from the command line. It is helpful if you want to automate end to end the deployment of your chatbot. see provisioning doc <http://errbot.io/en/master/user_guide/provisioning.html>_

v4.1 Miscellaneous changes

• Now if no [python] section is set in the .plug file, we assume Python 3 instead of Python 2.
• Slack: identifier.person now gives its username instead of slack id
• IRC: Topic change callback fixed. Thx Ezequiel Brizuela.
• Text/Test: Makes the identifier behave more like a real backend.
• Text: new TEXT_DEMO_MODE that removes the logs once the chat is started: it is made for presentations / demos.
• XMPP: build_identifier can now resolve a Room (it will eventually be available on other backends)
• Graphic Test backend: renders way better the chat, TEXT_DEMO_MODE makes it full screen for your presentations.
• ACLs: We now allow a simple string as an entry with only one element.
• Unit Tests are now all pure py.test instead of a mix of (py.test, nose and unittest)

v4.1 fixed

• Better resillience on concurrent modifications of the commands structures.
• Allow multiline table cells. Thx Ilya Figotin.
• Plugin template was incorrectly showing how to check config. Thx Christian Weiske.
• Slack: DIVERT_TO_PRIVATE fix.
• Plugin Activate was not reporting correctly some errors.
• tar.gz packaged plugins are working again.

v4.0.3 (2016-03-17)

fixes:

• XMPP backend compatibility with python 2.7
• Telegram startup error
• daemonize regression
• UTF-8 detection

v4.0.2 (2016-03-15)

hotfixes:

• configparser needs to be pinned to a 3.5.0b2 beta
• Hipchat regression on Identifiers
• Slack: avoid URI expansion.

v4.0.1 (2016-03-14)

hotfixes:

• v4 doesn’t migrate plugin repos entries from v3.
• py2 compatibility.

v4.0.0 (2016-03-13)

This is the next major release of errbot with significant changes under the hood.

v4.0 New features

• Storage is now implemented as a plugin as well, similar to command plugins and backends. This means you can now select different storage implementations or even write your own.

The following storage backends are currently available:

• The traditional Python shelf storage.
• In-memory storage for tests or ephemeral storage.
• SQL storage <https://github.com/errbotio/err-storage-sql>_ which supports relational databases such as MySQL, Postgres, Redshift etc.
• Firebase storage <https://github.com/errbotio/err-storage-firebase>_ for the Google Firebase DB.
• Redis storage <https://github.com/errbotio/err-storage-redis>_ (thanks Sijis Aviles!) which uses the Redis in-memory data structure store.
• Unix-style glob support in BOT_ADMINS and ACCESS_CONTROLS (see the updated config-template.py for documentation).
• The ability to apply ACLs to all commands exposed by a plugin (see the updated config-template.py for documentation).
• The mention_callcack() on IRC (mr. Shu).
• A new (externally maintained) Skype backend <https://github.com/errbotio/errbot-backend-skype>_.
• The ability to disable core plugins (such as !help, !status, etc) from loading (see CORE_PLUGINS in the updated config-template.py).
• Added a --new-plugin flag to errbot which can create an emply plugin skeleton for you.
• IPv6 configuration support on IRC (Mike Burke)
• More flexible access controls on IRC based on nickmasks (in part thanks to Marcus Carlsson). IRC users, see the new IRC_ACL_PATTERN in config-template.py.
• A new callback_mention() for plugins (not available on all backends).
• Admins are now notified about plugin startup errors which happen during bot startup
• The repos listed by the !repos command are now fetched from a public index and can be queried with !repos query [keyword]. Additionally, it is now possible to add your own index(es) to this list as well in case you wish to maintain a private index (special thanks to Sijis Aviles for the initial proof-of-concept implementation).

v4.0 fixed

• IRC backend no longer crashes on invalid UTF-8 characters but instead replaces them (mr. Shu).
• Fixed joining password-protected rooms (Mikko Lehto)
• Compatibility to API changes introduced in slackclient-1.0.0 (used by the Slack backend).
• Corrected room joining on IRC (Ezequiel Hector Brizuela).
• Fixed "team_join event handler raised an exception" on Slack.
• Fixed DIVERT_TO_PRIVATE on HipChat.
• Fixed DIVERT_TO_PRIVATE on Slack.
• Fixed GROUPCHAT_NICK_PREFIXED not prefixing the user on regular commands.
• Fixed HIDE_RESTRICTED_ACCESS from accidentally sending messages when issuing !help.
• Fixed DIVERT_TO_PRIVATE on IRC.
• Fixed markdown rendering breaking with GROUPCHAT_NICK_PREFIXED enabled.
• Fixed AttributeError with AUTOINSTALL_DEPS enabled.
• IRC backend now cleanly disconnects from IRC servers instead of just cutting the connection.
• Text mode now displays the prompt beneath the log output
• Plugins which fail to install no longer remain behind, obstructing a new installation attempt

v4.0 Breaking changes

• The underlying implementation of Identifiers has been drastically refactored to be more clear and correct. This makes it a lot easier to construct Identifiers and send messages to specific people or rooms.
• The file format for --backup and --restore has changed between 3.x and 4.0 On the v3.2 branch, backup can now backup using the new v4 format with !backupv4 to make it possible to use with --restore on errbot 4.0.

A number of features which had previously been deprecated have now been removed. These include:

• configure_room and invite_in_room in XMPPBackend (use the equivalent functions on the XMPPRoom object instead)
• The --xmpp, --hipchat, --slack and --irc command-line options from errbot (set a proper BACKEND in config.py instead).

v 4.0 Miscellaneous changes

• Version information is now specified in plugin .plug files instead of in the Python class of the plugin.
• Updated !help output, more similar to Hubot’s help output (James O’Beirne and Sijis Aviles).
• XHTML-IM output can now be enabled on XMPP again.
• New --version flag on errbot (mr. Shu).
• Made !log tail admin only (Nicolas Sebrecht).
• Made the version checker asynchronous, improving startup times.
• Optionally allow bot configuration from groupchat
• Message.type is now deprecated in favor of Message.is_direct and Message.is_group.
• Some bundled dependencies have been refactored out into external dependencies.
• Many improvements have been made to the documention, both in docstrings internally as well as the user guide on the website at http://errbot.io.

Further info on identifier changes

• Person, RoomOccupant and Room are now all equal and can be used as-is to send a message to a person, a person in a Room or a Room itself.

The relationship is as follow:

For example: A Message sent from a room will have a RoomOccupant as frm and a Room as to.

This means that you can now do things like:

• self.send(msg.frm, "Message")
• self.send(self.query_room("#general"), "Hello everyone")