1.18. 0.8.x Branch

1.18.1. Version 0.8.1-incubating

1.18.1.1. Build and System Integration

  • The couchdb script no longer uses awk for configuration checks as this was causing portability problems.
  • Updated sudo example in README to use the -i option, this fixes problems when invoking from a directory the couchdb user cannot access.

1.18.1.2. Database Core

  • Fix for replication problems where the write queues can get backed up if the writes aren’t happening fast enough to keep up with the reads. For a large replication, this can exhaust memory and crash, or slow down the machine dramatically. The fix keeps only one document in the write queue at a time.
  • Fix for databases sometimes incorrectly reporting that they contain 0 documents after compaction.
  • CouchDB now uses ibrowse instead of inets for its internal HTTP client implementation. This means better replication stability.

1.18.1.3. Futon

  • The view selector dropdown should now work in Opera and Internet Explorer even when it includes optgroups for design documents. (COUCHDB-81)

1.18.1.4. JavaScript View Server

  • Sealing of documents has been disabled due to an incompatibility with SpiderMonkey 1.9.
  • Improve error handling for undefined values emitted by map functions. (COUCHDB-83)

1.18.1.5. HTTP Interface

  • Fix for chunked responses where chunks were always being split into multiple TCP packets, which caused problems with the test suite under Safari, and in some other cases.
  • Fix for an invalid JSON response body being returned for some kinds of views. (COUCHDB-84)
  • Fix for connections not getting closed after rejecting a chunked request. (COUCHDB-55)
  • CouchDB can now be bound to IPv6 addresses.
  • The HTTP Server header now contains the versions of CouchDB and Erlang.

1.18.2. Version 0.8.0-incubating

1.18.2.1. Build and System Integration

  • CouchDB can automatically respawn following a server crash.
  • Database server no longer refuses to start with a stale PID file.
  • System logrotate configuration provided.
  • Improved handling of ICU shared libraries.
  • The couchdb script now automatically enables SMP support in Erlang.
  • The couchdb and couchjs scripts have been improved for portability.
  • The build and system integration have been improved for portability.

1.18.2.2. Database Core

  • The view engine has been completely decoupled from the storage engine. Index data is now stored in separate files, and the format of the main database file has changed.
  • Databases can now be compacted to reclaim space used for deleted documents and old document revisions.
  • Support for incremental map/reduce views has been added.
  • To support map/reduce, the structure of design documents has changed. View values are now JSON objects containing at least a map member, and optionally a reduce member.
  • View servers are now identified by name (for example javascript) instead of by media type.
  • Automatically generated document IDs are now based on proper UUID generation using the crypto module.
  • The field content-type in the JSON representation of attachments has been renamed to content_type (underscore).

1.18.2.3. Futon

  • When adding a field to a document, Futon now just adds a field with an autogenerated name instead of prompting for the name with a dialog. The name is automatically put into edit mode so that it can be changed immediately.
  • Fields are now sorted alphabetically by name when a document is displayed.
  • Futon can be used to create and update permanent views.
  • The maximum number of rows to display per page on the database page can now be adjusted.
  • Futon now uses the XMLHTTPRequest API asynchronously to communicate with the CouchDB HTTP server, so that most operations no longer block the browser.
  • View results sorting can now be switched between ascending and descending by clicking on the Key column header.
  • Fixed a bug where documents that contained a @ character could not be viewed. (COUCHDB-12)
  • The database page now provides a Compact button to trigger database compaction. (COUCHDB-38)
  • Fixed portential double encoding of document IDs and other URI segments in many instances. (COUCHDB-39)
  • Improved display of attachments.
  • The JavaScript Shell has been removed due to unresolved licensing issues.

1.18.2.4. JavaScript View Server

  • SpiderMonkey is no longer included with CouchDB, but rather treated as a normal external dependency. A simple C program (_couchjs) is provided that links against an existing SpiderMonkey installation and uses the interpreter embedding API.
  • View functions using the default JavaScript view server can now do logging using the global log(message) function. Log messages are directed into the CouchDB log at INFO level. (COUCHDB-59)
  • The global map(key, value) function made available to view code has been renamed to emit(key, value).
  • Fixed handling of exceptions raised by view functions.

1.18.2.5. HTTP Interface

  • CouchDB now uses MochiWeb instead of inets for the HTTP server implementation. Among other things, this means that the extra configuration files needed for inets (such as couch_httpd.conf) are no longer used.
  • The HTTP interface now completely supports the HEAD method. (COUCHDB-3)
  • Improved compliance of Etag handling with the HTTP specification. (COUCHDB-13)
  • Etags are no longer included in responses to document GET requests that include query string parameters causing the JSON response to change without the revision or the URI having changed.
  • The bulk document update API has changed slightly on both the request and the response side. In addition, bulk updates are now atomic.
  • CouchDB now uses TCP_NODELAY to fix performance problems with persistent connections on some platforms due to nagling.
  • Including a ?descending=false query string parameter in requests to views no longer raises an error.
  • Requests to unknown top-level reserved URLs (anything with a leading underscore) now return a unknown_private_path error instead of the confusing illegal_database_name.
  • The Temporary view handling now expects a JSON request body, where the JSON is an object with at least a map member, and optional reduce and language members.
  • Temporary views no longer determine the view server based on the Content-Type header of the POST request, but rather by looking for a language member in the JSON body of the request.
  • The status code of responses to DELETE requests is now 200 to reflect that that the deletion is performed synchronously.