We’re proud to announce a major new release of CKAN! 1.5 represents a big step forward since our last major release in May. Alongside our usual PyPI release, we are now also releasing regular Ubuntu 10.04 packages, for easy installation.

So now it’s (almost) as simple as “apt-get install ckan” and “ckan-create-instance” Here are the docs: http://docs.ckan.org/docs/ckan/en/ckan-1.5/install-from-package.html

Major changes since 1.4:

• official government data stores are usually Read-Only to the public, but now we’ve added Moderated Edits, to allow the public to suggest changes and correct metadata. Once suggestions are moderated by the officials, everyone can benefit from the improvements.
• we got rid of a form framework that was difficult to customise. Now web designers can play about with the form’s HTML/CSS/Javascript to get it exactly how they want. They can do take advantage of autocomplete and other tools in our new powerful Action API. And when the form submits, the data goes through a new schema validation system. We spent a long time planning this, evaluating all sorts of systems and now we’re really pleased with the results.
• total visual overhaul for viewing and editing datasets
• vastly improved informatinoa about CKAN and user documentation (ckan.org, wiki.ckan.org & docs.ckan.org)

Plus hundreds of little things like: Captcha to keep spammers at bay, calling them ‘datasets’ rather than pushing our concept of ‘packages’ and fixing the odd bug that crops up too.

We’re also really proud of the recent work in CKAN extensions, such as for handling geographic data, harvesting data from other data stores and providing APIs for data in the catalogue with Web Store.

Thank you to the amazing on-line community for their continued ideas, suggestions and support in the development of this open source data hub software.

Here’s the full changelog, listing all the changes since the most recent minor release (1.4.3.1, 30th September):

v1.5 2011-11-07

Major: * New visual theme (#1108) * Package & Resource edit overhaul (#1294/#1348/#1351/#1368/#1296) * JS and CSS reorganisation (#1282, #1349, #1380) * Apache Solr used for search in core instead of Postgres (#1275, #1361, #1365) * Authorization system now embedded in the logic layer (#1253) * Captcha added for user registration (#1307, #1431) * UI language translations refreshed (#1292, #1350, #1418) * Action API improved with docs now (#1315, #1302, #1371)

Minor: * Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) support (#1271) * Strings to translate into other languages tidied up (#1249) * Resource format autocomplete (#816) * Database disconnection gives better error message (#1290) * Log-in cookie is preserved between sessions (#78) * Extensions can access formalchemy forms (#1301) * ‘Dataset’ is the new name for ‘Package’ (#1293) * Resource standard fields added: type, format, size (#1324) * Listing users speeded up (#1268) * Basic data preview functionality moved to core from QA extension (#1357) * Admin Extension merged into core CKAN (#1264) * URLs in the Notes field are automatically linked (#1320) * Disallow OpenID for account creation (but can be linked to accounts) (#1386) * Tag name now validated for max length (#1418)

Bug fixes: * Purging of revisions didn’t work (since 1.4.3) (#1258) * Search indexing wasn’t working for SOLR (since 1.4.3) (#1256) * Configuration errors were being ignored (since always) (#1172) * Flash messages were temporarily held-back when using proxy cache (since 1.3.2) (#1321) * On login, user told ‘welcome back’ even if he’s just registered (#1194) * Various minor exceptions cropped up (mostly since 1.4.3) (#1334, #1346) * Extra field couldn’t be set to original value when key deleted (#1356) * JSONP callback parameter didn’t work for the Action API (since 1.4.3) (#1437)

Today we released CKAN 1.4.2 to PyPI, which includes support in the model for edit moderation (which is used by this CKAN extension) and a password reset facility. There are also a number of minor features and bugfixes we covered in the five weeks since the previous release.

CKAN v1.4.2 2011-08-05

Major:

• Packages revisions can be marked as ‘moderated’ (#1141)
• Password reset facility (#1186/#1198)

Minor:

• Viewing of a package at any revision (#1236)
• API POSTs can be of Content-Type “application/json” as alternative to existing “application/x-www-form-urlencoded” (#1206)
• Caching of static files (#1223)

Bug fixes:

• When you removed last row of resource table, you could’t add it again – since 1.0 (#1215)
• Adding a tag to package that had it previously didn’t work – since 1.4.1 in UI and 1.4.0 in API (#1239)
• Search index was not updated if you added a package to a group – since 1.1 (#1140)
• Exception if you had any Groups and migrated between CKAN v1.0.2 to v1.2 (migration 29) – since v1.0.2 (#1205)
• API Package edit requests returned the Package in a different format to usual – since 1.4 (#1214)
• API error responses were not all JSON format and didn’t have correct Content-Type (#1214)
• API package delete doesn’t require a Content-Length header (#1214)

Today we’ve released a new version of CKAN at PyPI. Version 1.4 covers updates to the core code during the last five weeks of development. As seen at ckan.net, users have improvements for viewing alternative metadata formats and changing authorization settings, whilst administrators benefit from improved tools to manage unwanted revisions. The full changelog is copied below.

Alongside with these changes to the core CKAN, arguably the more exciting features in CKAN are now being added as ‘extensions’. Examples of recent extensions include: previewing of data, storage for data, automatic link checking, data click-through counts and harvesting of metadata from other catalogues. Further information here.

Changelog – CKAN 1.4

Major:

• Authorization forms now in grid format (#1074)
• Links to RDF, N3 and Turtle metadata formats provided by semantic.ckan.net (#1088)
• Refactor internal logic to all use packages in one format – a dictionary (#1046)
• A new button for administrators to change revisions to/from a deleted state (#1076)

Minor:

• Etags caching can now be disabled in config (#840)
• Command-line tool to check search index covers all packages (#1073)
• Command-line tool to load/dump postgres database (#1067)

Bug fixes:

• Visitor can’t create packages on new CKAN install – since v1.3.3 (#1090)
• OpenID user pages couldn’t be accessed – since v1.3.2 (#1056)
• Default site_url configured to ckan.net, so pages obtains CSS from ckan.net- since v1.3 (#1085)

We’ve just released CKAN 1.3 which has been shown off on ckan.net during the past week. Below is a summary changelog of the major changes since we released v1.2 three months ago.

v1.3 2011-02-18

http://trac.ckan.org/milestone/ckan-v1.3

Highlights of changes:

• Package edit form improved:
  • field instructions (#679)
  • name autofilled from title (#778)
• Group-based access control – Authorization Groups (#647)
• Metadata harvest job management (#739, #884, #771)
• CSW harvesting now uses owslib (#885)
• Package creation authorization is configurable (#648)
• Read-only maintenance mode (#777)
• Stats page (#832) and importer (#950) moved out into CKAN extensions

More minor:

• site_title and site_description config variables (#974)
• Package creation/edit timestamps (#806)
• Caching configuration centralised (#828)
• Command-line tools – sysadmin management (#782)
• Group now versioned (#231)