Previous Versions

 

This page contains information on previous versions of the SobekCM software.  Go to the Current Version Notes to see information on the latest version released.

SobekCM releases are available here, as well as through GitHub and Sourceforge:

• SobekRepository.org: https://sobekrepository.org/software/download
• GitHub (Daily Builds): https://github.com/MarkVSullivan/SobekCM-Web-Application

Below is the list of all the SobekCM application and system releases in reverse order, with the oldest at the bottom. For the most recent (or currently pending) release, the items in italics are generally the items which still need completion before the new version is released.

 

SobekCM 5.1.0 is centered on a major new capability: support for Google Cloud Storage as an alternative to local-disk storage for resource files, running either in a hybrid mode (small files like thumbnails and METS stay local, while masters and derivatives live in the cloud) or a fully cloud-resident mode. This required rebuilding how the application, the Builder, and the image server all read and write files so they work correctly regardless of storage backend, along with a redesigned image tile server capable of serving zoom/pan requests against cloud-stored images, corrected MIME-type handling so files render inline instead of forcing downloads, and access control for restricted items that now works through signed URLs rather than on-disk rules that don't apply once files leave local disk.

This release also improves how the Builder processes items — it now distinguishes a simple metadata update from a full item rebuild and skips the expensive processing pipeline entirely when only metadata changed, while still correctly carrying forward structural and thumbnail information from the previously published version. Authentication and several admin-facing screens were also restructured into a more extensible plugin-style architecture, letting features like OIDC and SAML login be added, enabled, or disabled independently rather than being built permanently into the core application.

The rest of the release is a broad set of correctness and polish fixes: tightened login requirements on usage-statistics screens, a fix for restricted items incorrectly hiding their thumbnails, a stale-cache issue where a visibility change could silently revert on the next page load, cleaner and more consistent banner placement across admin and personal-account screens, several fixes to the web-based skin editor, and continued Linux compatibility work for the Builder. An automated smoke-test suite was also added so key parts of a live deployment are checked automatically on every release going forward.

View the complete release notes for version 5.1.0

 

 

---

Version 5.0 brings a number of changes users will notice directly: an integrated archival system with reporting and checksum verification, single sign-on support (OpenID and SAML), IIIF manifest and search support for sharing resources with other institutions, the ability to restrict items to specific user groups, expanded OER capabilities including new tools for authoring and viewing open textbooks, and continued UI localization with full French and Spanish translations plus new support for German, Italian, and Dutch.

The new version runs faster, is more responsive, and uses significantly less memory at the same time. The rebuilt caching system (necessary with the .NET upgrade) is vastly outperforming the older caching system.

Response "cold serving" digital resources and collections is much improved. The first time a digital resource or item aggregation is requested, the resource is not present in the memory cache, so it would have to be built, augmented with database data, and converted to a transfer object. Now the final resource transfer objects are cached. This results in first hits against a digital resource being 10-15x faster and the first time an aggregation is hit is approximatley 20x faster.

Just as significant, though less visible, is the work done to modernize the platform's foundation and make it easier to support and extend going forward. The application has been migrated from .NET Framework 4.7.2 to .NET 10, moving the hosting model to ASP.NET Core through Kestrel and opening the door to running SobekCM on Linux in addition to Windows. Searching now goes entirely through Solr, which allowed the metadata tables and much of the related stored-procedure logic to be removed from the database, simplifying the schema and making it easier to support PostgreSQL and RDS alongside MS SQL. Digital resource files can now be stored in GCS cloud buckets rather than only local storage, and a large amount of general tech debt was addressed along the way, including security patching, OWASP remediation, and a substantial cleanup of dead code and unused stored procedures. Together, these changes are intended to make future development, hosting, and long-term maintenance of SobekCM considerably easier.

View the complete release notes for version 5.0.0

 

---

Version 4.11.0 contains a great many fixes but the largest is a new solr/lucene index and searching system. All basic searches (and associated faceting) now occurs in solr, rather than metadata searches occurring within the database. This greatly increases the speed of searching and also allows for better support of non-roman characters in the metadata and full text.

Eventually, this new searching system will completely replace the old legacy searching system, but for now, the two can operate side-by-side.

In addition, a great number of tweaks were applied to the metadata templates and metadata display in the citation. Fixes for bookshelves and several other features help round out this new version.

The new version is recommended for ALL instances, not just those that are ready to upgrade to the new searching system.

View the complete release notes for version 4.11.0

 

---

Version 4.10.2 included a number of architectural changes, which continue the development of the open architecture and plug-in support.  This includes, among other things, the following categories of changes:

• The builder included many updates, but most importantly, generation of the HTML static files is mostly relegated to the web application.
• The system now supports result viewer plug-ins as well and a new timeline result viewer plug-in is currently under development. 
• Potential customization of the digital resource pages was greatly increased with a new item layout configuration, allowing complete control of the page layout and support for a plug-in powered widget system on the page. 
• HTTPS/SSL support was also increased, including a new worldwide CDN for HTTPS static content.  

View the complete release notes for version 4.10.2

 

---

Version 4.10.1 includes many updates and fixes for issues introduced in the major architectural changes from version 4.10.0.  Many small improvements were implemented to the management interfaces as well, providing more managing web skins and the system-wide settings.

A new standard TEI plug-in was added which adds native support for TEI, including online editing and metadata extraction.  This allows TEI items to be uploaded into the system and displayed via server-side XSLT application with custom stylesheets for each TEI.  In addition, metadata mapping configuration files control how the bibliographic data is imported into the system from the TEI header.  System admins can manage multiple different XSLTs, stylesheets, and mappings and individually permission users for access to each.  Once the TEI is in the system, users can also edit the TEI in an online XML editor.

This new version continued to make incremental improvements to the architecture of configurations and plug-ins resulting in a more mature open framework system.  This open architecture has already begun to be used in multiple instances, to support customizations, new item viewers, or new ways to access data.  Several of the plug-ins have been released as open-source and are made available as sample code on the community maintained plug-in page. 

In addition, many community-suggested improvements and user-reported issues were included in this release.

View the complete release notes for version 4.10.1

 

---

Version 4.10.0 of SobekCM includes the most comprehensive collection of changes since SobekCM was first released ten years ago. This version continues preparation for the release of version 5.0 by updating the basic architecture of the system to be more configurable and customizable. In addition, the web application is increasing dependent on the discrete microservice architecture provided by the SobekCM engine. This version also adds a new plug-in architecture for adding extensions which can add new metadata types, modify or add new item viewers, customize item citation display, add new engine endpoints, add new builder modules, and much more. Over thirty new microservice endpoints were also added to the SobekCM engine as well. The sum of all these changes results in a more open-architecture which can easily be modified and customized for any institution.

In addition, this version adds several new administrative screens for users. A new set of many system-wide settings screens exposes all configuration information used by the system currently, even if they cannot be modified directly through the web interface. In addition, interoperability between the SobekCM Builder service and the web has been increased by adding the ability to view and filter the builder log through the user interface. System administrators can also add or remove builder folders, directly through a new builder folder management screen.

The builder was also updated in this new version. The architecture was modified to take advantage of the new configuration microservices offered by the engine and supports enabled plug-ins as well. The automatic usage collection and monthly emails were updated to make the process run more smoothly and significantly quicker. The builder can also be set to use Tesseract to perform automatic OCR on incoming TIFF files.

In total, nearly one hundred thousand lines of code were changed between the previous version and this version, which represents roughly 35% of the total codebase and 66% percent of the files were changed in some way.

View the complete release notes for version 4.10.0

 

---

This version includes the addition of a robust web content system, useful for online exhibits, general announcements related to your digital collection, or documentation. This module is the largest single addition to the SobekCM system in the last five years, with more than 10 new administrative screens. In addition, all of the administrative and public pages are supported by the SobekCM Engine REST APIs. This makes this module the first to be supported 100% by the new architecture. As a result of this work, the architecture of the SobekCM Engine continued to evolve.

In addition to the web content work, several changes occurred to searching and browsing material, a new video viewer was added, and the system realize many small improvements. In addition, the efforts towards the cleanest code possible was continued and additional support for PostgreSQL and MySQL continued to be added. The ability to customize several messages, including the 404 missing page and no results pages was added. Finally, many community reported bugs have been corrected.

View the complete release notes for version 4.9.0

 

---

This update includes many small fixes and updates to the REST API. The REST API error catching and troubleshooting was generally improved upon and several new endpoints were added. The most robust added endpoint is the new search results endpoint. I expect some changes to occur to this API over for the next version though, in particular how items are displayed under the titles on search results and browses for deeply hierarchical material, like newspapers.

In addition, groundwork was laid for increased support for the top-level web content pages and for PostgreSQL and MySQL support as well.

View the complete release notes for version 4.8.11

 

---

This release increases the REST API support to include XML and also adds the url-resolver endpoint. The builder is updated to ensure all page images present are added to the items on reprocess and that all related viewers are added, as well as fixing an issue with the text searchable flag. This version also makes great strides in some final clean-up of the HTML5 and adds excellent accessibility support. Ability to customize the look and feel is incrementally increased again. A great many reported bugs are fixed and some UI enhancements included that were requested.

View the complete release notes for version 4.8.10

 

---

View the complete release notes for version 4.8.9

 

---

View the complete release notes for version 4.8.8

 

---

Summaries of released work are included in the two links below:

• All major work completed in 2014 is included in the Retrospective on 2014
• All major work completed in the first quarter of 2015 up to version 4.8.7 is included in this update.

Continuous integration and releases resulted in less documentation for each individual version during this period.

  

---

For older releease version information click here for the archived release history.

More Information

Want to drill down into some of these topics in more detail? Here are some related, child pages:

• Version 4.10.2
• Version 4.10.1
• Version 4.10.0
• Version 4.9.0
• Version 4.8.11
• Version 4.8.10
• Version 4.8.9
• Version 4.8.8