Spark 2.7.0 Released

Blogs Ignite Realtime Blogs
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The Ignite Realtime community has released Spark 2.7.0 for general availability and it can be downloaded from Ignite Realtime: Downloads (Note: there are no working Mac OS X installer as our current build environment has no working setup for Mac, also Spark has lots of issues on the current Mac OS versions and the community has no active Mac OS developers willing to step in).

This release is a mandatory one to use with the recently released Openfire 3.10.0. As 2.6.3 version has issues connecting to the new server version. Though there is a not recommended workaround to revert to using Old SSL setting, which is less secure than TLS. The community strongly advises to upgrade to 2.7.0 version. Even if you are not planning to update to 3.10.0 release of Openfire yet. Spark hasn’t seen a release in almost 3 years, but it was constantly evolving. Many fixes and improvements have been applied to the code since the last release. Some users have it deployed in the production environment for years and find it more stable than 2.6.3 version (as myself with 200+ user base).

We are sad that currently Spark has no Project Lead and there are no active contributors to this project. So, fixes and new features may not come up quickly. We hope open source community will embrace and improve this project in the future. You can start sharing your patches on the GitHub. If you find new issues, you can report them in the forums and we will at least file them in the bug tracker for the future developers to tackle.

Here’s a list of some important fixes/changes:

[SPARK-1074] Sending part doesnt get a notification about the transfer cancellation - Jive Software Open Source

[SPARK-1362] No confirmation on the sender’s part that the file transfer completed - Jive Software Open Source

[SPARK-1397] Fix the displaying of system tray icons - Jive Software Open Source (minor one, but not for such a picky person as i am, Spark icon now looks much nicer)

[SPARK-1414] Chat window is not flashing when receiving new message on Windows 7 64 bit - Jive Software Open Source

[SPARK-1525] Update smack - Jive Software Open Source (huge update for Spark and this is probably the cause why 2.6.3 can’t connect to newer Openfire as it uses older Smack library)

[SPARK-1524] Spark is not reconnecting automatically after connection loss - Jive Software Open Source

[SPARK-1546] Spark visually shows that a message is not sent - Jive Software Open Source (one of the most annoying bugs in 2.6.3)

Also the Conversation history dialog has been completely reworked and should load faster and should be easier to navigate. Java has been updated to the recent 1.7.0 version, which should fix issues with some timezones. There are also numerous memory leak fixes. You can find the full changelog here: Spark Changelog

There are also some open issues. Like the still broken voice chat module. One of the past Spark maintainers cstux has started a work on fixing this, but it is moving slowly. File transfers may not work between 2.6.3 and 2.7.0 versions because of many changes to this functionality in 2.7.0. This is a somewhat frightening list of open issues (though many are minor) Spark - Jive Software Open Source So, again, we encourage Java developers to move this project forward.

Here are sha1sums for the downloads:

** sha1sum filename**

1f74720be219fda89c450869291c0f15116f7c89 spark_2_7_0.deb

4f6c5b0c6ee7eb876509e724032222e1c997e8b1 spark_2_7_0.exe

db25cd5cf0871bdd3dd1ca5ed22592b99f57d37e spark_2_7_0.tar.gz

0ab7bcfdebf6177399bf3107d0d26c22869b5795 spark-2.7.0.rpm

ab1f1e2ca5def7801d64183bfcb5d54697292e71 spark-2.7.0.src.rpm

eac98c6a9123170b52160499bfe8857c68d1d736 online/spark_2_7_0_online.exe

2 Likes
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You can find a few hints and scripts for silent install here Trying to use GPO to install Spark

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So the problem was not solved with the plugin redfire. Well connected , good quality picture, but , Spark hangs up and turn it off , you can have just killing the process . How to fix this bug , I’ll bet this is inconceivable how much time .

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Redfire plugin is developed independently to Spark. Also i think it is deprecated in favor of openfire-meetings plugin. There is nothing to fix in Spark to make Redfire work. Redfire must be updated to work with new Spark version, but as i said, i think it is not developed anymore. I see that you have already asked in Red5 forum, so you can only wait for Dele (author of this plugin) to reply or maybe try ofmeet plugin (but it is not for Spark).

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I’m understood, thank you. I will wait for a response Dele ( I think I am not alone )

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The hanging issue with redfire plugin Spark was first seen with 2.6.3 on 64 bit windows. I was unable back then to reproduce the issue back then because I have 32 bit windows. It happens when a video window is closed. The openfire meetings plugin for Spark uses the same code minus the video windows as it opens a chrome browser window instead and therefore does not have this issue.

I do not plan to do any further work on the redfire plugin or the spark plugin as I have moved away from Red5/Flash to WebRTC on a very busy full time job. It however seems some folks are still using Red5/Flash and the redfire plugin. For their sake, any one with a 64 bit java development environment should please take a look at debugging this issue. The code for the plugin is fairly straightforward. The source code is inside the plugin.

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Dele, thanks for the reply. I will think further. Very interesting video to worked Spark from the interface, so the user is not tossed on the browser. Thanks again.

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Hello,

we are using Spark with ejabberd server. After upgrade on 2.7.0 we are facing problem with displaying name of users. In contact list instead of name of a user we see only a bullet (Available, Away…). I tried to set again NICKNAME but it doesnt work. Pidgin hasn’t the problem.

Is it possible to fix? Or is there any “work around” ?

Thx

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Jakub, please post your issues on the forums, not here.

You can try the latest Spark build. It has some fix for nicknames, maybe it will help. Not using ejabberd myself. Works fine with Openfire.

Install4j

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Jakub, 2.7.1 just has been released. It has a fix for nicknames issue with LDAP and ejabberd. Try it out. Maybe it will fix your problem.