JIRA 4.2 RC1 Release Notes


12 October 2010

JIRA 4.2 RC1 is a public development release leading up to JIRA 4.2. For all production use and testing of JIRA, please use the latest official release.

A Release Candidate (RC) is a preliminary release leading up to the official release of a JIRA version. RC releases are a fairly stable snapshot of our work in progress and provide an advance preview of new features to the general public. JIRA plugin developers can also use RC releases to test and fix their plugins in advance of an official release.

Do not use in production

RC releases should not be used in production environments as they are not officially supported.

Please also take note of the following information:

  • RC releases may not be safe — RC releases are snapshots of the ongoing JIRA development process. As such:
    • While we deem these releases to be fairly stable, they have not undergone sufficient testing to be deemed an official (final) release.
    • While feature development work is complete, some features may be subject to change or be removed before the next full release.
  • No upgrade path — Because RC releases still represent work in progress, we cannot provide a supported upgrade path between RC releases, from Beta to RC releases, or from any RC to the eventual final release. Thus, any data you store in a JIRA RC release may not be able to be migrated to a future JIRA release.

The Atlassian team is proud to bring you the JIRA 4.2 RC1 release. As always, we would love to hear your feedback and comments about this release. To keep the discussion centralised, please provide your feedback as a comment on JRA-22093.

JIRA 4.2 gives you a few extra minutes of precious time every day, by providing the ability to triage issues directly from the Issue Navigator without you having to open each issue. For the mouse-averse, the new 'Operations Dialog' box provides access to all menu options via the keyboard.

To help speed up your ability to work on issues, we've also made common actions and workflow operations accessible from convenient dialog boxes.

Time-tracking has become much more flexible: you can now edit the Original Estimate and set the Remaining Estimate to zero when resolving an issue. You can also log work via workflow 'transition' (or any other) screens — now accessible via speedy dialog boxes.

The 'Labels' plugin is now a permanent part of JIRA, simplifying system management for GreenHopper users and administrators — and everyone else who likes to label their JIRA issues.

GreenHopper 5.3 RC1 is also available for download, and is compatible with JIRA 4.2 RC1. A feature highlight coming up in GreenHopper 5.3 are GreenHopper-specific keyboard shortcuts.

JIRA 4.2 RC1 differs from the Beta 3 release in the following respects:

  • We've fixed 209 bugs, including 56 relating to Internet Explorer and 10 relating to the REST API
  • Improved flow and navigation through issue actions — users are more likely to land on the page from which they performed an action.
  • More performance improvements have been incorporated into the auto-complete feature for multi-select fields (such as the Component and Versions fields) and the JQL auto-complete feature.

Note to developers: JIRA 4.2 includes the Atlassian Plugin Framework version 2.5, and an alpha release of the JIRA REST API. We are very keen to hear your feedback on the REST API — please try it out and add your comments to JRA-22139.

Supported Platforms: Please note from our announcements in late 2009/early 2010 that JIRA 4.2 will not support Oracle WebLogic, IBM WebSphere, Java Platform 5 and Internet Explorer 6.

Highlights of JIRA 4.2:

Thank you for your interest in JIRA 4.2 RC1
Download RC1

Upgrading to JIRA 4.2 RC1

Development releases of JIRA are available here. Before upgrading, please refer to the JIRA 4.2 Upgrade Guide.

Highlights of JIRA 4.2

 

Dialogs for Common Actions and Workflow Operations

For faster edits to an issue, pop-up dialogs have replaced screen changes for common actions and workflow operations.

You can now perform an action on an issue, via a dialog, directly from the Issue Navigator — without opening the issue first. The issue marker shows which issue you have selected (via your keyboard) in the result list.

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Keyboard Shortcuts and 'Operations Dialog'

JIRA users can now do more without a mouse — perfect for power users:

Hints also appear at the bottom of a dialog, helping you to learn keyboard shortcuts on the fly:

The new 'Operations Dialog' lets you perform actions via the keyboard (instead of the mouse), using the full-stop ('dot') key to access the 'Actions' and 'Workflow' menus. The Operations Dialog works from the Issue Navigator and also when viewing an individual issue.

See Using Keyboard Shortcuts for more information.

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Issue Labelling

The functionality from the Labels plugin is now included in JIRA out-of-the-box. The labels dialog has a great new UI, and issue notifications are now optional when updating labels for an issue.

See Labeling an Issue for more information.

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Improvements to the 'View Issue' Screen

We have improved the look and feel of the 'View Issue' screen even more. Some improvements include:

  • Tighter spacing between lines to reduce space between elements
  • Stronger section headings
  • The 'Description' field separated into its own section
  • Horizontal division lines between each custom field
  • Votes and Watchers fields on the same line
  • Labels represented as bubbles

Individual blocks can now be collapsed to streamline your issue view. The view state (i.e. which blocks are expanded/collapsed) will also be remembered across issues. After much feedback on the 4.1 updates to the 'View Issue' screen, you can now also add a comment at the bottom of the 'Comments' section.

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Auto-complete for Versions and Components

Editing the Component, Affects Version(s) and Fix Version(s) is now quicker and easier. Upon typing into one of these fields, a dropdown menu appears with a list of options matching the first few characters you typed.

(info) For convenience, the version lists are divided into Released and Unreleased categories.

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Attachment Sorting by Date or Name

Attachments can now be sorted by date or by name, in ascending or descending order.

See Attaching a File for more information.

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Viewable Files in Zipped Attachments

You can expand an attached zip file to see its contents. The first 30 files will be shown for larger zip files.

See Accessing ZIP-format File Contents for more information.

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'Log Work' Improvements

You can now log work when you resolve an issue, saving you a step. You can also set the Remaining Estimate to 0 upon resolving an issue.

You now have the ability to edit the Original Estimate, even if work has been logged on an issue (not shown here).

We've also included the ability to add work log descriptions in wiki-markup (not shown here).

Lastly you can add the 'Log Work' field to any screen in JIRA (not shown here).

See Logging Work on an Issue for more information.

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Improvements to the Issue Navigator

The Issue Navigator has been updated to match the look and feel of an issue.

We've also added: an issue marker and colour highlight for keyboard navigation (blue); colour highlight for mouse selection (grey); toggle to collapse the search form.

When a change is made via a dialog, JIRA will give you feedback on that change as confirmation.

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'Filter' Gadget creation via the Issue Navigator

When viewing search results, you can quickly add a 'Filter Results' gadget to your dashboard via the 'Views' menu.

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User Avatars and Hover Profile

JIRA users can now add an avatar to their profile. You can then mouse-hover over a user's name to show information about that user — this is available when viewing an issue, using the Issue Navigator, browsing a project, viewing activity, viewing a user profile and performing some administration tasks.

See Adding a User Avatar and Using Hover Profile for more information.

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New JQL Functions

Additional JQL functions for projectsLeadBy and componentsLeadBy — useful for finding all issues where a particular user is the lead of a component, or a project.

See Advanced Searching for more information.

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Other Enhancements and Fixes

  • If you use Firefox or IE, you can now search JIRA issues from the convenience of your browser's search box. Just add your JIRA site as a search engine/provider, via the dropdown menu next to the browser's search box. This is because JIRA now supports the autodiscovery part of the OpenSearch standard.
  • Click here for the full list of issues resolved in 4.2.

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Last modified on Oct 12, 2010

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