News

You have probably noted that wiki and forum have been moved into sub-domains: wiki.limb-project.com and forum.limb-project.com respectively. This should allow us to spread the load among different servers in the future.

Old forum and wiki links should work just fine via Apache mod_rewrite module, so we hope you won't have any broken links issues.

We are about to release the new redesigned version of limb-project.com which will be based on Limb3 framework. We are also going to move limb-project.com to the new server that is why there can be some DNS issues.

You can preview the new version of limb-project.com at new.limb-project.com address for now. The old(current) version of the site will be available for some time at old.limb-project.com.

The new version of limb-project.com will be placed into Limb repository as an example Limb3 based project.

It's 2007! Fill your heart with new hopes, reach out for new opportunities and celebrate the New Year! Cheers!

The previous 2006 year was really full of exciting events for the core dev.team:

Firstly we finally managed to launch the Limb 3.x PEAR channel. We have high hopes for Limb 3.x and all our future efforts will be mainly focused on further development and improvement of Limb 3.x packages. We're pushing the PHP's limits with Limb 3.x and prove that PHP still can be a powerfull RAD tool despite to much PHP criticizing lately.

Secondly we released Limb 2.4-rc1 stable release(well, almost stable since it's a release candidate) after more than one year of silence in this branch. We hope to release 2.4 final pretty soon and even though many developers still find 2.x attractive we'd like to admit that there won't be much development in this branch in the future. The code base of 2.x is pretty outdated and sometimes ugly, that's why we want to convert 2.x into 3.x package as soon as possible.

Well, finally, here comes the first stable version of Limb 2.4.x with lots of bugfixes and some new cool features!

Here's the list of the most noticeable changes:

• PHP-4.4.x compatibility(we really tried hard to spot all problematic places in the code)
• improved JavaScript bundling mechanism, which can be nicely combined with dynamic JavaScript loading of modules.

See CHANGELOG for more details.

We hope 2.4 final release will follow soon after this one, once this release is a bit more tested with PHP-4.4.x on production servers. However we admit that we're mainly focused on Limb 3.x development and after 2.4 final release most probably the 2.x branch will be closed.

After almost a year of hard working we're proud to announce the launch of PEAR channel for Limb 3.x packages! These packages should greatly simplify the process of developing web applications with PHP. One of the most interesting packages among them is web_app which allows you to develop web applications in Rails alike way using similar controllers, pretty flexible ActiveRecord powered model and excellent WACT based views.

These are the steps you're required to follow in order to install web_app package and all its dependencies:

# as of this writing PEAR 1.5 is required which is in aplha state
$ pear install PEAR-alpha 
            
$ pear channel-discover pear.limb-project.com

# we're in alpha state too
$ pear install limb/web_app-alpha     

The channel has a bit terse look right now however this is going to be fixed pretty soon. We're also working on providing automatic nightly builds of packages right from the repository.

The english documentation is mostly outdated but we're working on this issue as well(we're finishing the Russian documentation at the moment). However there are some simple examples in web_app package which, hopefully, should help you get started quickly.

We'd like to thank all core Limb developers for their great work and dedication to the project. It would never have happened without you guys!

Let it be a new year present to all PHP agile geeks ;)

Not enough cool news for today? Here's one more ;)

Alongside with JIRA we have FishEye installed at http://fisheye.limb-project.com. FishEye is a "swiss-army knife" written in Java for tracking any changes in repository and it integrates smoothly with JIRA.

We'd like to express our gratitude to cenqua company for giving us a free copy of this marvelous product for OpenSource development of LIMB.

LIMB is gradually becoming a pretty large project and with the new conception of packages it has become pretty difficult to use Trac with many sub-projects. Trac is a great tool for tracking issues for one project however it doesn't allow to add new sub-projects easily and that's become quite problematic.

JIRA is a another super flexible and configurable tool written in Java which allows you to have almost complete control over project issues. We decided to apply for JIRA Open Source free license and...atlassian folks were very generous to provide us with the free copy of JIRA. Thank you so much!

We installed JIRA at http://jira.limb-project.com, made some minor look-and-feel changes and moved all unresolved issues from Trac there.

We also made some projects in JIRA: a separate project for LIMB 2.x, a bunch of projects for LIMB 3.x packages(each package gets its own project) and one for all project related issues(site redesing, new mailing lists, etc)

Trac link is not available anymore and it simply redirects to JIRA. Good buy, old pal.

We have moved all LIMB mailing lists from SourceForge to our own server and added some new lists. We got tired of spam on the SourceForge mailing lists and hope we'll have a better control over them. Please note that old lists are not going to be maintaned and moderated, so if you're subscribed to one of those old lists please consider subscribing to the new ones.

Here's the list of them:

• limb-announce - Low traffic list: only occasional announcements about LIMB releases go here
• limb-dev - Development discussion
• limb-issues - All JIRA issues go to this list(did I say JIRA? ;) It's going to be the next news)
• limb-svn - This list receives automated commit emails from the repository.
• limb-users - General LIMB usage discussion

Following the migration of the repository the Trac site has moved to the new server too! It usually takes about one day for new DSN A records to propagate but if you can't wait that long you can do the following trick. Add the following line to your hosts file(/etc/hosts for *nix or %WINDOWS%/system32/drivers/etc/hosts for Windows):

195.14.47.165   trac.limb-project.com 

Hi there!

The LIMB subversion repository moved physically to the new server(with brand new Subversion 1.4 installed) while its DNS address svn.limb-project.com remains the same.

It may take up to one day for DNS A records to propogate, so be patient please. Or if you don't want to wait you can put the following line to your hosts file(/etc/hosts for *nix or %WINDOWS%/system32/drivers/etc/hosts for Windows):

195.14.47.165   svn.limb-project.com 

Please also note that for your convenience the repository access schema was simplified a little. Now you can use the following address both for anonymous repository browsing and authorized check ins: https://svn.limb-project.com/limb.

While the old access schema(via svn://svn.limb-project.com/svn/limb and https://svn.limb-project.com:4433/svn/limb ports) is considered obsolete it will work for some time(a month or two) so that you will be able to migrate smoothly.

We're in the process of installing Fisheye - the swiss army knife for monitoring and searching repository changing. Keep an *eye* on news ;)

P.S. There can be some glitches in Trac workflow since now it's not located on the server with the repository. We're working on this...

Hi all!

This very day two years ago limb-project.com was launched and two days later the first release of LIMB was available for public download at SourceForge.net.

The core LIMB dev. team has had a lot of hard work and fun in the course of these two years and we'd like to thank our small(but constantly growing) community for helping us spotting bugs, sending patches and requesting insane features :)

LIMB 2.4.0-alpha4 released!

This is the fourth alpha release of the new 2.4 series of LIMB which fixes some bugs and introduces some major improvements.

Here's the list of the most noticeable changes:

• Overhaul of JavaScript dynamic modules loading(server side JavaScript file bundler removed)
• Better transparent session objects, no need for __session_class_path attributes anymore(idea taken from LIMB 3.x)
• Experimental form_action_delegator class added, it notifies its listener with a number of useful events making form processing much easier in some cases
• <form:ERRORS> tag now displays form general errors
• <form:FIELDS_ERRORS> tag displays form fields specific errors(former <form:ERRORS>)
• db driver improvements: auto transaction, connection resuming, etc
• Now it's possible to pass arguments for the action in controller _define_actions() method
• Initial support for loading images into images repository via FTP

See CHANGELOG for more details.

From now on you can track and download the cutting edge snapshots of LIMB 2.x development branch from our brand new build server.

This is how it works: every night build scripts check if there were any changes in LIMB 2.x svn repository and, if any, the new snapshot is baked. If the build was successful(all tests passed, archives created, etc) it's marked green otherwise red, so you can decide if you really want this build to download. You can see the build log and change log as well.

We hope to gradually improve the snapshots server and provide more services turning it into the full-blown continuous integration solution(build RSS feedbacks, e-mail notifications, etc).

P.S. LIMB 3.x snapshots are coming soon...

Howdy! ;) LIMB 2.4.0-alpha3 released!

This is the third alpha release of the new 2.4 series of LIMB which fixes pretty good amount of bugs and adds some new features.

Here's the list of the most noticeable changes:

• new more flexible full page cache subsystem
• experimental events infrastructure added(instead of old status mechanism)
• mysql db driver sets connection charset if it was specified
• WACT template constants support added(e.g. {MY_FOO_CONSTANT})
• published status fixes(reverting 2.3.x behaviour)
• using FCKEditor 2.1.1 instead of HTMLArea
• further PHP-4.4.x+ compatibility fixes

See CHANGELOG for more details.

The year is over and we are really proud looking at what has been done during that time. And there's even a lot more planned to do in the next year - stay with us!

We wish you to have happy holidays, lots of good time, food and drinks :) We all need to have some good rest before hacking tons of code in the new year.

The core dev. team is going to have a 9 days vacation(yep, we do have official long winter vacations in Russia :)) We have very high hopes for the next year and some rest for the dev. team will be just in time.

See ya :)

P.S. The old fellow on the left is a Russian Santa Claus or, as we call him, 'Ded Moroz'. Cheers!

Bit by bit, very carefully we're moving towards PEAR compatible packages in LIMB 3.x development branch. It's pretty clear now that LIMB by itself is a package as well and it doesn't make sense to keep the rest of packages separately from it in Subversion repository. That's why we decided to change the repository layout making it more logical and consistent. Below is the list of changes:

• /3.x/trunk => /3.x/packages/core/trunk
• /3.x/tags => /3.x/packages/core/tags
• /3.x/branches => /3.x/packages/core/branches
• /packages/* => /3.x/packages/*

As you may see LIMB is a core package now while other packages simply moved to /3.x/packages

If you're using SVN version of LIMB 3.x and its packages, relocate your working copies please.

Our server finally moved to MySQL 4.1 database server!

Unfortunately there was a little downtime(about an hour), we are sorry for any inconvenience.

LIMB 2.4.0-alpha2 released! This is the second alpha release of the new 2.4 series of LIMB which fixes a numerious amount of bugs and adds some new features.

Here's the list of the most noticeable changes:

• PHP-4.4.x compatibility
• locale constants cleanup: there's only one constant used LOCALE_ID
• 'locale_id' property removed from site_object
• session is attached to the client ip
• db drivers transaction fixes
• AJAX based JIPs added
• <limb:MEDIA>, <limb:SITE_BRANCH_SELECTOR>, <fetch:PARENT>, <limb:JS_BUNDLE>, <dev:DATASPACE> tags added
• experimental low-level CLI support added

See CHANGELOG for more details

UPDATE: there was a little nasty error during release rollout which prevented web server from reaching PROJECT_DIR/var/js directory. This bug can be easily fixed by placing .htaccess file containing "Allow from all" into PROJECT_DIR/var/js directory. If you grabed the release before 13 December 2005 consider fixing it, later releases have been already fixed.

Subversion repository /limb/2.x/branches/2.4 branch moved to /limb/2.x/trunk. It's an official main development branch of 2.x now. Update your working copies please.

LIMB trac issues tracker moved from http://trac.limb-project.com to https://trac.limb-project.com for better security. Please update your bookmarks.

We're glad to announce the release of a demo project built on LIMB 2.4-alpha1.

Here's the list of the most noticeable changes:

• Way more flexible and simpler LIMB project web server installation
• Improved admin GUI
• Better I18N support(UTF8)
• General code cleanup, refactoring and speed improvements

See CHANGELOG for more details.

WARNING: It's not recommended to use this release with PHP 4.4 due to BC breaks introduced by new implementation of references. It also should be noted that PHP 5.0.5 and higher will throw fatal error while PHP 5.0.4 should be working fine.

We're happy to announce the availability of LIMB 3.0-alpha4 release!

This version of LIMB mainly addresses the following issues:

• Heavily refactored controller architecture for better flexibility and extendability.
• File resolving mechanism was rewritten with new FileSchema mechanism introduced.
• Complete refactoring of toolkit implementation. Service Locator pattern implemented.
• Initial implementation of better I18N support(yet not finished).
• All non core functionality was moved to separated packages, e.g. tree and user stuff.
• Many non critical improvements to utility functionality(db, sql, ORM, etc).
• General code cleanup and refactoring.

You can read more about accomplished tasks in the LIMB issue tracker.

See CHANGELOG for more detailed changes.

WARNING: This version of LIMB is not compatible with PHP 5.0.5 and higher due to WACT code incompatibilities. However we believe it's not a WACT bug but a PHP one and we hope that these bugs will be addressed in the future versions of PHP. Consider using PHP 5.0.4 for now, please.

We're glad to inform you about immediate availability of archived version of LIMB wiki. This archive is just a bunch of plain html files and images which you can browse offline(no need for web server, internet connection etc).

Just download the latest archive, unpack and open start.html with your favourite browser.

The wiki archive is rolled automatically every week. There will be separate versions of offline documentation available for english and russian languages after a little while.

Here comes the demo project based on LIMB 3.0-alpha3 which you can grab here. By the way if you're not interested in running tests you can download one of the 'essential' archives which have much smaller size.

The goal of this demo is to give you the main idea about forthcoming release of LIMB 3.0.

This demo project have all external libraries bundled with it so you should hopefully have no problem installing it(please read the README file in downloaded archive for further installation instructions).

Here's the short list of the most critical LIMB changes since alpha2:

• PHP5 only
• improved ORM(yet very simple)
• more comprehensive DBAL utils implementation
• general code cleanup and refactoring

UPDATE: This release SourceForge archives were updated since earlier sql db dumps were compatible with mysql 4.1 only. If you experience any problems with loading sql dumps consider downloading fixed version please.

There's also sad news, this release won't work with PHP 5.1 due to WACT code incompatibilities. We hope this unpleasant issue will be resolved before the next release of LIMB.

We'd like to thank [sid] for letting us know about these bugs.

In the light of recent developments of LIMB 3.x and in an attempt to make the LIMB subversion repository layout more logical the following changes were made:

• /limb/php4 renamed to /limb/2.x
• /limb/php5 renamed to /limb/3.x
• /limb/php5/trunk moved to /limb/zend_contest
• /limb/php4/branches/trunk moved to /limb/2.x/trunk
• /limb/php4/branches/3.0 moved to /limb/3.x/trunk
• /limb/packages/php4 renamed to /limb/packages/3.x

If you have any working copies of LIMB prior to this change please relocate them. We apologize for any possible inconveniences involved.

You can find more information on checking out the repository at LIMB svn page.

Good news! We started using Trac in a pilot mode for tracking LIMB related development issues.

Trac is an enhanced wiki and issue tracking system for software development projects. It uses a minimalistic approach to web-based software project management.

However we're going to use dokuwiki instead of wiki provided by Trac since it's more convenient for batch operations(dokuwiki is file based!).

Feel free to browse the roadmap, timeline, source code and of course tickets :)

Having struggled with PHP4 weirdness for a long time we give up :( Some stuff can't be properly done with PHP4, or it can be but with so much useless effort which defeats the purpose.

We encountered critical problems with object references and broken overload extension while refactoring LIMB 3.0 ORM functionality which made the cup run over. Back to PHP5!

Well after all it was a predictable move. LIMB 3.0 exceptions imitation was creaking at the seams and desperately needed total refactoring. With PHP5 there will be real exceptions in LIMB 3.0 finally.

We'll be moving very slowly and probably not going to use public, protected, private access levels for some time. But we'll defenitely get rid off annoyning "&" and use native overload support.

LIMB 3.0 repository path will be in PHP4 branch a little bit util we release next alpha release.

At the same time 2.x branch will support PHP4 and won't require any PHP5 fancy tricks.

Hello, folks! We're cleaning SourceForge LIMB releases section and making its structure more logical. All future LIMB releases will be classified by the following packages: limb-2.x and limb-3.x(instead of former limb(php4)). Furthermore, CRUD and limb(php5) packages are obsolete now and will be hidden.

As packages names imply all LIMB 2.x releases will go into 2.x package and 3.x releases into 3.x package. It's still unclear where demo and empty projects should belong to(do we need 2.x-demo, 2.x-empty packages?). But for now we'll be placing them into 2.x or 3.x package as well.

We updated download section and hope there will be no broken links problem. Feel free to report if any.

We moved LIMB repository from berlios.de to our own Subversion server!

The motivation behind this step is simple - we're going to install trac - an excellent issue tracking system which requires local subversion repository for project integration.

Please relocate your working copies, this can be done with the following command:

svn sw --relocate svn://svn.berlios.de/limb svn://svn.limb-project.com/limb

If you don't want to check out the working copy you can alternatively simply browse LIMB repository online.

More on checking out working copy of LIMB from repository you can find on LIMB svn page.

After some debating we decided to move all current LIMB documentation to wiki.

Wiki seems to be a quite flexible format for other developers to share information. Among many wikis around we chose DokuWiki as being a pretty sweet piece of software written with PHP.

We'd like to invite everyone who'd like to contribute to LIMB development.

However we won't be giving public write access for visitors due to possible spamming threat. If you'd like to add or improve(our english is far from perfect) documentation just contact the developers in order to get the wiki account. Getting LIMB wiki account is just a formality!

We also hope to make a DokuWiki parser later which would translate wiki format into more generalized DocBook format.