Meza/Halloween release

Issues

Fully linked issues are complete. Issues with only a link on the issue ID are in progress.

1. update Project documentation and Online resources #3
2. Restructure Meza into multiple roles and collection(s) #42
3. Ensure .smw.json has a home #44
4. create wiki fails #48
5. Use a declarative wiki ID (YAML) #101
6. Ensure that all essential variables are available to all playbooks #207
7. PageForms exception from SMWDIProperty class not found #200
8. [FEATURE] Ensure all bundled extensions and skins are in core #201
9. [FEATURE] Replace ImageMagick with better scaler 204
10. [BUG] permission problems #186

New and Improved

New Features

Use a declarative wiki ID (in YAML) #101 Meza wikis are now registered and configured in YAML in a source-controlled file rather than a combination of YAML, templated PHP files and directories on the filesystem. The new system is backwards compatible, but the old usage is now deprecated.

Enhanced documentation / UX The meza command help system was migrated from text files to markdown files plus the Python 'rich' library.

• 📊 Structured tables for arguments and options
• 🎨 Syntax-highlighted code blocks
• ⚠️ Visual warnings with emojis
• 🔗 Cross-references between related commands
• 📋 Consistent formatting across all files

New Playbooks

migrate-wikis - Playbook to migrate existing directory-based wikis to declarative configuration

Usage: sudo meza migrate-wikis <environment> The Playbook uses a new role migrate-to-declarative-wikis

to read your PHP, YAML, and directories into the new declarative YAML syntax for wiki configuration. It will backup and edit /opt/conf-meza/public/public.yml to save your new configuration. See config/defaults.yml for example declaration

New Roles

• essential-vars - setup key variables early; avoid extra-vars; use OS-specific logic for cross-platform support
  • Replace inline variable definitions with include_role

Project / DevOps

• implement repo commit hook to enforce code checks
• Expanded CONTRIBUTING to include tools and quality controls
• Created new "raw" CHANGELOG and "formatted"3 RELEASE NOTES which are now updated automatically on push.
• 🎯 Add new badges in README.md
• Analyze and map the flow of 'meza deploy' vs. 'meza create wiki'

More

• Fix sudo meza maint run_jobs (all wikis) and sudo meza maint run_jobs -- demo (demo only)
• Fix inadvertent cases where ansible_user could resolve to 'root'
• Improved verify-permissions playbook
  • Scrutinize users, permissions, mode, user:group ownership
  • e.g. Change m_config_public_mode from 0755 to 0775 for dirs 0664 for files by using Symbolic mode u=rwX,g=rwX,o=rX
• Fix test-certbot playbook to use set-vars role
• Ensure playbooks load variables first with pre_tasks
• Add configuration to allow HTML emails and set default User Preference option to opt-in
• Corrected CommentStreams branch
• Multiple improvements to linting quality and adoption of Ansible best practices like using fully qualified collection names (FQCN)
• Fix quoting in /opt/.deploy-meza/refresh-links.sh
• Add Debian support for ImageMagick and Ghostscript following the established pattern for cross-platform compatibility
• Ensure that --check works with narrow playbook execution
• Update SBOM files
• Core configuration (OS-specific, config/paths.yml, and config/defaults.yml) in the set-vars role are always loaded regardless of which tags are specified, ensuring that essential variables are available for any tagged deployment scenario.

PHP is the HyperText Preprocessor = the most popular programming language for the web

HyperText Markup Language = structured text that uses logical links (hyperlinks) between nodes containing text.