Release of Spark 2.6.3

Dear Community,

due to several issues, we have released a 2.6.3 on July 1st. The following issues were fixed

  • SPARK-1383Login screen shows disabled fields.
  • SPARK-1394 Search in history is not working
  • SPARK-1395 NPE when exiting a chat window with ESC
  • SPARK-1396 Send Broadcast Window doesnt show when not using JTattoo
  • SPARK-1379 Support for XEP-0147 (URI handling)
  • SPARK-1392 Check if Spark is really checking for updates even if that option is turned off

A new Feature was added:

Expand ability to customize spark if you want to build your own branded version

You can download the release in the download section of the igniterealtime web site.

The Spark development will be reduced until the 4th quarter this year.

There has been a significant demand for help about the packaging of custom editions for Spark. I would like to ask all users who have done custom packages to report their approach in the forum. The project files of the packager (e.g. appdeploy) are really welcome.

Walter Ebeling

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Awesome job guys! Thanks to everyone who jumped on these problems. It really feels like home around here again!

Scott

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This is good but also kinda sucks, big time. I just spent the last 2 full days packaging spark 262 into an MSI with a bunch of customizations. my 200+ employees are already upgrading from 258 to 262. shoot

Sorry for that. The *.properties files should continue to work. There is one new property that allows to exchange the button (account) in the login screen against am URL for (password reset).

This might sound daft, but im unable to find a direct link to download the nightly build of Spark?

(windows environment).

Ive searched the page linked above, but not found a direct link?

@adam navigate to http://bamboo.igniterealtime.org/browse/SPARK-INSTALL4J/latest choose “Artifacts” -> Install4j -> spark*.exe

@church well, i think now you know who to pack spark into MSI (maybe you could create a document “How to pack Spark with MSI” to share you experiences with us?) sorry for this flood of releases but there seems to be no community for release candiates, so some bugs often appears after the release. please stay patient and believe in a bug free spark 2.6.3

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@Holger, you’re right. I can package the MSI again. It’s the deployment that really sucks. The Spark EXE is something like 30MB and the MSI I created was only 18MB in size but even at 18MB it kills our network if we try to deploy spark.msi via login script (in group policy). And since the client management plugin for openfire doesnt work with MSIs, We have to have each person at 150 some PCs manually upgrade Spark. We’ve found no other way, even using psexec doesnt work well…but all that’s not any concern yours - I’m just saying

@church, what are you using to package spark (repackager, etc…)? I was actually just trying to build this for 2.6.2 as we cannot have the OTR plugin on our network for compliance purposes, but will now wait till 2.6.3 (maybe even later depending on how 2,6.3 goes).

@ragenkagen appdeploy repackager. I tried absolute installer but it was too difficult to figure out. I hear ya about waiting. I wish I had.

@church, thanks for the info! @holger, I found this article already posted (it was the instructions I was following) about building msi package (posted by Joe) if it helps: http://community.igniterealtime.org/docs/DOC-2126

OTR can be disabled for corporate usage (I have the same requirement). Please follow the instructions here: http://community.igniterealtime.org/message/214209#214209

And I would assume that you can do client exercise client control or have repackaging capabilities. It’s common practice to do a repackaging of an application that is used in a whole company. If you follow this thinking, a removal or the OTR plugin is simple.

Thanks Walter! I don’t do a lot of “repackaging”…mostly just setting up custom installs to be pushed to end user systems for MS and Adobe products…for which we use the tools provided by the respective companies for creating these. Otherwise, we mostly use the standard installs with the appropriate silent commands (what we did with spark 2.5.8). Once 2.6.3 is released and if it works well for our needs, I will probably give this a try. Thanks all for your help!

Silent install and uninstall is provided by 2.6. series via “-q” at least according to report by Church.

Thanks Walter, I have used the following commands for every version of spark we have tried out on our network (2.5.8 - 2.6.2) and they have worked for all of them:

-q <—Silent

I believe I got it from the following post: http://community.igniterealtime.org/message/158909%3Bjsessionid=9C7B7198AA39345E F4A14B1ECE1F4CDA?tstart=2

So what’s the deal now with SPARK-1379 ? On this post it is shown as being open but in JIRA it is mentioned as fixed and closed?

Spark-1379 is done as far as we have understood XEP-0147 and received test results. Nothing is open.

hey guys…small problem with the latest version there is no “keyboard shortcut” to “join selected room”.

I used to have this automated with keyboard login commands to log into 10 rooms but with the latest update there seems to be no way to automate the “Join room” command.

Excellent release!

Can I have some details on this new feature:

Expend the ability to customize spark if you want to build your own branded version.

Thanks!

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There is a really wide range of options to alter Spark.You will have to do some work though. The images are in one of the JAR. The default properties are there too. You will have to build your own package for installation. Appdeploy seems to be a suitable product for Windows to do this.

Please read through the forum. Wolf_P and Joe have documented a lot of options to alter Spark, including options to switch off some menues.

built package successfully using repackager, 7zip to edit default.properties and editing the 2.6.0 build file posted by Joe: http://community.igniterealtime.org/docs/DOC-2126 to work with 2.6.3. Thanks all for your help!

Just need to get a similar package for Mac OS X now.