2008-09-03

ZFN 0.2.0 Released

The first public release in the 0.2 series, code-named "Double Day", has been released (after a brief illness). New features in this series include file locking, Mac write support, and iPhone optimization. Download

File locking is the most important feature in this release, and it was quite a shift inside ZFN's internals. To understand the need for this feature, we need to examine a common use example. Let's say John and Jane are using ZFN to share their files. John begins editing his thesis, "My Great Thesis.doc". While he's doing that, Jane realizes that John made a spelling mistake in his second paragraph, and saves the document. Then John saves his changes, overwriting Jane's spelling fix.

Without file locking, this kind of data loss would happen all the time. What file locking does is inform Jane when she tries to save that John is currently working on the file, and that she should try saving after he's done. For the most part, this will happen automatically.

This release also includes full Mac OS X read and write access to ZFN shares. Again, this is due to ZFN's support of file locking.

As an added bonus, ZFN's web interface now is optimized for the iPhone, so iPhone users can now view shared files without having to zoom and scroll through the page.

When installing the new version, the index server database schema has changed, so you will need to export the old database as an XML file (using the export-index.py script) and re-import it with the new version.


Read more...

2008-09-02

ZFN 0.2 Final Delayed

Hello, everyone. I apologize for the delay in releasing 0.2.0 final, but I was ill over the weekend and have recovered (nasty head cold!). Anyway, the release should be coming within the next 24 hours.


Read more...