What's new in 2016.2

This section provides a summary of the notable changes in Swarm for the 2016.2 release. Full details are available in the distribution's RELNOTES.txt file.

Major new functionality

Updated Swarm's RESTful API to version 4

Support for private projects has been added, as well as file-level and inline comments.

See Comments : Swarm Comments and Projects : Swarm Projects for details.

API support for file-level and line-level comments

Swarm's Comments API now supports making file-level and line-level inline comments on changes and reviews.

See POST /api/v4/comments/ for details.

Private projects

Swarm now supports private projects. These are projects visible only to users with admin or super privileges in the Helix Versioning Engine, or users who are owners, moderators, or members of the private projects.

See Private projects for details.

Minor new functionality

Group name validation

Validation for group names is now performed more thoroughly.

Extended pre-flight checks within index.php

Swarm's index.php script has been extended to catch more error conditions prior to fielding a request. Specifically, when the config.php does not return an array, and if the Short links feature appears to be mis-configured.

Short links now support custom port or sub-folder

The Short links feature (introduced in Swarm 2016.1 SP1) now has an external_url configuration item, allowing short links to work with Swarm installations using HTTPS, a custom port, or a sub-folder.

See Short links for details.

Known limitations

Access Control

Swarm maintains a variety of information in the Helix Versioning Engine's keys facility. By default, users with list-level privileges can read these keys, which can include comments that contain excerpts of code they may not normally have access to.

The Helix Versioning Engine, version 2013.1/659207 or higher, has a configuration setting to require admin-level privileges for access to read and write keys. See Hiding Swarm storage from regular users.

Task Stream Reviews

Pre-commit reviews in a task stream are not yet supported.