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Release Notes

1. Upgrade notes

As usual, we recommend that you have a full backup, of the database, application code and static files.

To update, follow these steps:

1.1. Update your Gemfile

gem "decidim", github: "decidim/decidim"
gem "decidim-dev", github: "decidim/decidim"

1.2. Run these commands

bundle update decidim
bin/rails decidim:upgrade
bin/rails db:migrate

1.3. Follow the steps and commands detailed in these notes

1.3.1 Configuration parameter change

Prior to 0.28, there was the possibility of configuring a list of disallowed passwords using the configuration parameter Decidim.password_blacklist or the environment variable DECIDIM_PASSWORD_BLACKLIST. These methods have been renamed as follows:

  • Decidim.password_blacklist becomes Decidim.denied_passwords
  • DECIDIM_PASSWORD_BLACKLIST becomes DECIDIM_DENIED_PASSWORDS

You can read more about this change on PR #10288.

2. General notes

3. One time actions

These are one time actions that need to be done after the code is updated in the production database.

3.1. Tailwind CSS introduction

The redesign has introduced Tailwind CSS framework to compile CSS. It integrates with Webpacker, which generates Tailwind configuration dynamically when Webpacker is invoked.

You will need to add tailwind.config.js to your app .gitignore. If you generate a new Decidim app from scratch, that entry will already be included in the .gitignore.

You can read more about this change on PR #9480.

3.2. Added Procfile support

We have added Procfile support to ease up the development of Decidim instances. In order to install foreman and the Procfile.dev, you need to run the following command:

bundle exec rake decidim:procfile:install

After this command has been ran, a new command will be available in your bin/, so in order to boot up your application you will just need to run

./bin/dev

Additional notes on Procfile:

In some cases, when running in a containerized environment, you may need to manually edit the config/webpacker.yml to edit the host parameter from host: localhost to host: 0.0.0.0

In some other cases when you run your application on a custom port (other than 3000), you will need to edit the Procfile, and add the parameter. web: bin/rails server -b 0.0.0.0 -p 3000

You can read more about this change on PR #10519.

3.3. User moderation panel changes

In older Decidim installations, when blocking an user directly from the participants menu, without being previously reported, it will hide that user, making it unavailable in the Reported Participants section. You will need to run this command once to make sure there are no users or entities that got blocked but are not visible in the participants listing.

bundle exec rake decidim:upgrade:moderation:fix_blocked_user_panel

You can read more about this change on PR #10521.

3.4. Change Webpacker to Shakapacker

Since the Rails team has retired the Webpacker in favour or importmap-rails or js-bundling, we got ouserlves in a situation where performance improvements could not be performed. In order to continue having support for Webpacker like syntax, we have switched to Shakapacker.

In order to perform the update, you will need to make sure that you do not have webpacker in your Gemfile. If you have it, please remove it, and allow Decidim to handle the webpacker / shakapacker dependency.

In order to perform the migration to shakapacker, please backup the following files, to make sure that you save any customizations you may have done to webpacker:

config/webpacker.yml
config/webpack/*
package.json
postcss.config.js

After all the backups and changes mentioned above have been completed, follow the default upgrade steps, as mentioned above in the document. Then run the below command, and replace all the configuration with the one that Decidim is providing by default:

bundle exec rake decidim:webpacker:install

This will make the necessary changes in the config/webpacker.yml, but also in the config/webpack/ folder.

Note for development

If you are using the Procfile.dev file, you will need to make sure that you have the following line in your configuration. If you have not altered the Procfile.dev file, you will not need to do anything, as we covered that part:

webpacker: ./bin/webpacker-dev-server

In order to run your development server, you will need to run the following command:

./bin/dev

You can read more about this change on PR #10389.

3.5. Graphql upgrade

In #10606 we have upgraded the GraphQL gem to version 2.0.19. This upgrade introduces some breaking changes, so you will need to update your GraphQL queries to match the new API. This change should be transparent for most of the users, but if you have custom GraphQL queries, you will need to update them. Also, please note, there might be some issues with community plugins that offer support for GraphQL, so you might need to update them as well.

Please see the change log for graphql gem for more information.

3.6. Orphans valuator assignments cleanup

We have added a new task that helps you clean the valuator assignements records of roles that have been deleted.

You can run the task with the following command:

bundle exec rake decidim:proposals:upgrade:remove_valuator_orphan_records

You can see more details about this change on PR #10607

4. Scheduled tasks

Implementers need to configure these changes it in your scheduler task system in the production server. We give the examples with crontab, although alternatively you could use whenever gem or the scheduled jobs of your hosting provider.

4.1. Automatically change active step in participatory processes

We have added the ability to automatically change the active step of participatory processess. This is an optional behavior that system admins can enable by configuring a cron job. The frequency of the cron task should be decided by the system admin and depends on each platform's use cases. A precision of 15min is enough for most cases. An example of a crontab job may be:

*/15 * * * * cd /home/user/decidim_application && RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rake decidim_participatory_processes:change_active_step

Each time the job executes it checks all currently active and published participatory processes and for each, it checks the steps with the date range in the current date. If a change should be made, it deactivates the previous step and activates the next step.

Platform administrators will always have the possibility to manually change phases, although if a cron job is configured the change may be undone.

This feature also changes the step start_date and end_date fields to timestamps.

You can read more about this change on PR #9026.

4.2. Social Share Button change

As the gem that we were using for sharing to Social Network do not support Webpacker, we have implemented the same functionality in decidim-core.

If you want to have the default social share services enabled (Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp and Telegram), then you can just remove the initializer in your application:

rm config/initializers/social_share_button.rb

If you want to change the default social share services, you will need to remove this initializer and add it to the Decidim initializer. We recommend doing it with the environment variables and secrets to be consistent with the rest of configurations.

rm config/initializers/social_share_button.rb
# In config/initializers/decidim.rb
Decidim.configure do |config|
(...)
  config.social_share_services = Rails.application.secrets.decidim[:social_share_services]
end
# In config/secrets.yml
decidim_default: &decidim_default
(...)
  social_share_services: <%= Decidim::Env.new("DECIDIM_SOCIAL_SHARE_SERVICES", "Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, Telegram").to_array.to_json %>

And define your own services in the environment variable DECIDIM_SOCIAL_SHARE_SERVICES with the services that you want.

With this change you can also define your own services. See documentation for social share services customization.

4.3. Password validator configuration

Decidim implements several password strength checks that ensure the platforms participants and admins are not using weak passwords. One of these validation rules includes checking the user's password against the domain parts of the website, such as foo.example.org. The validation ensures that in this case the user's password does not contain the words foo or example.

This check turned out to be problematic for short subdomains, such as the one in the presented example. Because of this, a new configuration was added to configure the minimum length of a domain part to match against the user's password. The default configuration for this is four characters meaning any domain part shorter than this limit will not be included in this validation rule.

The default value is 4 characters, to change this value you can change the configuration:

# In config/initializers/decidim.org

Decidim.configure do |config|
  config.password_similarity_length = 4
end

You can read more about this change on PR #10201.

5. Changes in APIs

5.1. Tailwind CSS instead of Foundation

In this version we are introducing Tailwind CSS as the underlying layer to build the user interface on. In the previous versions, we used Foundation but its development stagnated which led to changing the whole layer that we are using to build user interfaces on.

This means that in case you have done any changes in the Decidim user interface or developed any modules with participant facing user interfaces, you need to do changes in all your views, partials and view components (aka cells).

Tailwind is quite different from Foundation and it does not support the old classes and markup that we used to use with Foundation. You will need to update all your views according to the new user interface conventions. You should always aim to follow the styling in the core and utilize the same components that the core provides in order to provide a consistent user experience.

You can read more about this change on PR #9480.

You can read more about Tailwind from the Tailwind documentation.

5.2. Automated authorization conflict handling for deleted users

In previous Decidim versions authorization conflicts (i.e. authorizing the user with the same unique data as a previous user) needed to be always handled manually. Now these are automatically handled for cases where the original user had authorized their account, then deleted their account and finally authorized the new account with the same details as the previous account.

This means that some participation data bound to the previous deleted user account is now automatically transferred over to the new account during the authorization process to prevent e.g. duplicate votes in budgeting votings (note that duplicate votes have never been possible but this PR improves the participant experience for any person trying to do that). This includes any data that may or may not require an authorization through the component permissions because in Decidim we cannot be always perfectly sure when an authorization is required for the action or not. As an example, budget voting can start without an authorization and if the admin decides to configure an authorization for the component one day after the voting started, we need to assume that the all votes in that component required an authorization. Otherwise we would potentially allow multiple votes from the users that voted before the authorization was configured if they decided to create a new account to vote for a second time or deleted their original account and did that.

The transferred data can differ between the different modules but the official modules handle the following data automatically:

  • decidim-core
    • Amendments (meaning any amendments for amendable records in different modules, such as proposals at decidim-proposals)
    • Coauthorships (meaning any coauthorable records in different modules, such as proposals and collaborative drafts at decidim-proposals)
    • Endorsements (for any records, e.g. blog posts at decidim-blogs, debates at decidim-debates and proposals at decidim-proposals)
  • decidim-blogs
    • Blog posts
    • Endorsements for blog posts (through endorsement transfers at decidim-core)
  • decidim-budgets
    • Budgeting votes (or orders as we call them in the code)
  • decidim-comments
    • Comments
    • Comment votes
  • decidim-consultations
    • Consultation votes
  • decidim-debates
    • Debates
    • Endorsements for debates (through endorsement transfers at decidim-core)
  • decidim-elections
    • Election votes
    • Election form answers (through form answer transfers at decidim-forms)
    • Feedback form answers (through form answer transfers at decidim-forms)
  • decidim-forms
    • Form answers (for different forms, such as survey form answers at decidim-surveys or registration form answers at decidim-meetings)
  • decidim-initiatives
    • Initiatives
    • Initiative votes/signatures
  • decidim-meetings
    • Meetings
    • Meeting registrations
    • Meeting poll answers
    • Meeting registration form answers (through form answer transfers at decidim-forms)
  • decidim-proposals
    • Proposal votes/supports
    • Proposals (through coauthorship transfers at decidim-core)
    • Collaborative drafts (through coauthorship transfers at decidim-core)
    • Proposal amendments (through amendment transfers at decidim-core)
    • Endorsements for proposals (through endorsement transfers at decidim-core)
  • decidim-surveys
    • Survey form answers (through form answer transfers at decidim-forms)

If external modules need to transfer records between accounts during the authorization transfers, module developers can define the following initializer at their modules (note that coauthorable records are automatically already handled):

module Decidim
  module YourModule
    class Engine < ::Rails::Engine
      # ...
      initializer "decidim_your_module.authorization_transfer" do
        Decidim::AuthorizationTransfer.register(:your_module) do |transfer, auth_hander|
          # Define the record class as the first argument to be moved to the
          # new user and the column name as the second argument that maps the
          # record to the original user. This will update all records that match
          # the old deleted account to the new user that was authorized using
          # conflicting authorization data. If you need access to the
          # authorization handler that caused the transfer to be initiated, it
          # is available as the second yielded argument (auth_hander).
          transfer.move_records(Decidim::YourModule::Foo, :decidim_author_id)
        end
      end
      # ...
    end
  end
end

By default you should handle transfer of all records that can require an authorization and leave instance implementers the possibility to disable those transfers if they want to as explained below.

If you would like to disable the authorization transfers feature altogether, you can define the following code in your application class located at config/application.rb of your instance:

module DecidimYourCity
  class Application < Rails::Application
    # ...
    config.to_prepare do
      Decidim::AuthorizationTransfer.disable!
    end
    # ...
  end
end

Note that when the functionality is disabled, the authorization transfers work as they used to, i.e. a conflict is registered, admin users are notified about the conflict situation and the conflict needs to be manually handled.

If you would like to disable the authorization transfers only for specific modules, you can define the following code in your application class located at config/application.rb of your instance (pick only the modules you want to disable):

module DecidimYourCity
  class Application < Rails::Application
    # ...
    config.after_initialize do
      Decidim::AuthorizationTransfer.unregister(:core) # any coauthorable records, e.g. proposals and collaborative drafts
      Decidim::AuthorizationTransfer.unregister(:blogs) # blog posts
      Decidim::AuthorizationTransfer.unregister(:budgets) # budgets
      Decidim::AuthorizationTransfer.unregister(:comments) # comments
      Decidim::AuthorizationTransfer.unregister(:consultations) # consultation votes
      Decidim::AuthorizationTransfer.unregister(:debates) # debates
      Decidim::AuthorizationTransfer.unregister(:elections) # elections
      Decidim::AuthorizationTransfer.unregister(:forms) # form answers, e.g. survey form answers or meeting registrations
      Decidim::AuthorizationTransfer.unregister(:initiatives) # initiatives and initiative votes/signatures
      Decidim::AuthorizationTransfer.unregister(:meetings) # meetings, meeting registrations and meeting poll answers
      Decidim::AuthorizationTransfer.unregister(:proposals) # proposal votes/supports

      # Or if you want to unregister multiple modules at once
      Decidim::AuthorizationTransfer.unregister(:blogs, :forms, :comments)
    end
    # ...
  end
end

Note that when unregistering an authorization transfer handler, the transfers will still work normally for the other transfer handlers and no conflicts are reported for the admin users in case of conflict situation between a new authorization and a previous authorization for a deleted user. In this case, the authorization is transferred to the new user normally but the unregistered transfer handlers are not called which means those records will not be transferred between the user accounts. For conflicts between normal registered users or managed users, the conflicts are still reported as before. The automated authorization transfers only happen in case the previously authorized conflicting user account was deleted.

You can read more about this change at PR #9463.

5.3 Ability to hide content of a user from the public interface

As of #10111, the administrators have the ability of blocking the user from the public interface. In order to do so, the administrator needs to go to the user's profile and click on the "Report user" button. If the reporting user is a system wide admin, a new "Block this participant" checkbox will appear. If the checkbox is checked, then the reporting user will have the ability as well to check "Hide all their contents". The first checkbox will force the reporting user to admin area where he can add a justification for blocking the offending Participant. The second checkbox will hide all the content of the user from the public interface.

In order to hide all the Participant resources, keeping a separation of concerns, we have started to use ActiveSupport::Notifications.publish to notify the modules that the admin user has chosen to hide all the Participant's contributions.

We are dispatching the following event:

event_name = "decidim.system.events.hide_user_created_content"
ActiveSupport::Notifications.publish(event_name, {
  author: current_blocking.user, # user to be blocked
  justification: current_blocking.justification, # reason for blocking the user
  current_user: current_blocking.blocking_user # admin user that is blocking the other user
})

The plugin creators could subscribe to this event and hide the content of the user. For example, in order to hide the content of a user in the decidim-comments module, you could add the following in your engine initializer file:

initializer "decidim_comments.moderation_content" do
  ActiveSupport::Notifications.subscribe("decidim.system.events.hide_user_created_content") do |_event_name, data|
    Decidim::Comments::HideAllCreatedByAuthorJob.perform_later(**data)
  end
end

The Decidim::Comments::HideAllCreatedByAuthorJob is a job that uses the base Decidim::HideAllCreatedByAuthorJob job, having the following content:

module Decidim
  module Comments
    class HideAllCreatedByAuthorJob < ::Decidim::HideAllCreatedByAuthorJob
      protected

      def base_query
        Decidim::Comments::Comment.not_hidden.where(author: )
      end
    end
  end
end

For more complex scenarios, you could override the perform method of the job and add your own logic, following the patern:

module Decidim
  module YourModule
    class HideAllCreatedByAuthorJob < ::Decidim::HideAllCreatedByAuthorJob
      protected

      def perform(author:, justification:, current_user:)
        Decidim::YourModule::YourModel.not_hidden.from_author(author).find_each do |content|
          hide_content(content, current_user, justification)
        end

        Decidim::YourModule::YourSecondModel.not_hidden.from_author(author).find_each do |content|
          hide_content(content, current_user, justification)
        end
      end
    end
  end
end

You can read more about this change at PR #10111.

5.4. Extra context argument added to SMS gateway implementations

If you have integrated any SMS gateways, there is a small change in the API that needs to be reflected to the SMS integrations. An extra context attribute is passed to the SMS gateway's initializer which can be used to pass e.g. the correct organization for the gateway to utilize.

In previous versions your SMS gateway initializer might have looked like the following:

class MySMSGatewayService
  attr_reader :mobile_phone_number, :code
  def initialize(mobile_phone_number, code)
    @mobile_phone_number = mobile_phone_number
    @code = code
  end
  # ...
end

From now on, you will need to change it as follows (note the extra context attribute):

class MySMSGatewayService
  attr_reader :mobile_phone_number, :code, :context
  def initialize(mobile_phone_number, code, context = {})
    @mobile_phone_number = mobile_phone_number
    @code = code
    @context = context
  end
  # ...
end

You can read more about this change at PR #10760.