The major focus of this release is compatibility with the just-released Eclipse Juno , and implicitly Mylyn 3.8 .

Visual refresh

The query page has been streamlined to have a look which is more consistent with the other Mylyn connectors by using a horizontal layout which scales easier to large numbers of projects or filters.

The people selector fields have been changed from drop-downs to auto-complete fields . This has two major benefits:

1. When scrolling the editor using the mouse wheel the focus is no longer stolen by the drop-downs
2. With Mylyn 3.7 or newer, real names are displayed when auto-completing

Other improvements

The support for tags and time tracking has been improved . Also the connector is easier to run in non-OSGi environments.

Support for the tags and profile fields

The profile fields – platform, OS and OS Version are now editable. The tags are also available using a custom selection box. Tags are only editable for MantisBT 1.2.9 or newer – not yet released.

HTML preview using WikiText

Rich text fields now use a lightweight WikiText-based renderer rather than the old HtmlText-one, which embedded a browser in the page. The new editor should provide better cross-platform stability and performance.

The rendered is enabled by default for new repositories. To enable it for existing repositories, open the repository properties page and in the ‘Task Editor Settings’ section select the Mantis HTML markup option.

Other improvements

Support for MantisBT 1.2.9

The connector support the upcoming MantisBT 1.2.9 version, which brings some small changes to the SOAP API.

Better support for date fields and time zones

The custom date field values are now correctly translated from the repository value. Also, with MantisBT 1.2.9 the date and time information will be displayed in the user’s local timezone.

This release features multi-project queries, support for deleting task attachments and support for textarea custom fields.

Multi-project queries

MantisBT allows users to define filters as belonging to ‘All Projects’ . This is very useful for working with large numbers of projects and defining just one filter, e.g. ‘My tasks’ .  You can now use these filters in Eclipse, by selecting filters available under the ‘All Projects’ node:

Deleting task attachments

Task attachments may now be deleted from the attachment’s context menu.

Support for textarea custom fields

The development branch of MantisBT supports textarea custom fields. The plugin also supports them for the development branch.

As a direct consequence, users of TaskTop Dev can add a custom textarea field named task_relations to enable the full functionality of editing task associations.

Display attachment authors

Attachment authors are displayed.

Display the category in collapsed attributes section

When the attributes section is collapsed we now display a ‘project/category’ text hint. Previously only the project was displayed.

Other fixes

1. More judicious use of the SOAP API, resulting in fewer remote calls and email notifications when updating existing issues;
2. Fixes in comment hyperlink detection;
3. Fixed duplication of available queries which would sometimes occur in the query page.

For comments, bugs and support requests, our bug tracker and forums await you.

Mark private comments

Building on support from Mylyn 3.6, private comments are now marked as such in the task editor.

Delete tasks

We now enable deletion of task from the MantisBT repository, not only from the local task list.

Quicker task creation

When creating a new task, selecting a query or a task in the task list before creation short-circuits the project selection page, as the project is inferred from the current selection. If no selection is available, the project selection page appears as usual.

This can be combined with having the task selected and creating a task for a specific repository to bypass the new task wizard completely.

Support direct linking to bug comments

The MantisBT syntax of linking to comments using the ‘~’ prefix is now supported.

The 3.4.1 release of the connector is primarily a bugfix release concerning the HTML editor.

Open query in browser

Open query in browser is now available for users of MantisBT 1.2.5 or newer. To activate it for an existing query you need to refresh the repository configuration and then reopen the query dialog.

Update site fixes

The update site did not reference the latest available Mylyn version, but we did require it. This prevented users running versions of Mylyn 3.4 or older from installing the connector. Now the installation process is verified to work for old versions as well.

Rich text editor fixes

The rich text editor now blends in more naturally with the other controls:

1. The editor is now shown for unsubmitted tasks;
2. The editor is highlighted for incoming changes;
3. Editors are collapsed if there are no incoming changes.

Some of these changes require a nightly build of Mylyn Docs, which should be available as a released version in the 22nd of June, according to the current Mylyn plan.

This version rounds up a number of small fixes and enhancements.

Better search dialog integration

Searching for an nonexistent issue now pops up  an informative dialog, rather than a scary internal error one.

Attachment page enhancements

The attachment description fields is superfluous, and was removed. Comments are now created if specified.

Sub-task creation enhancements

A manual sync was needed to enable the ‘Create Subtask’ action on existing tasks. This requirement has been removed. Also, new sub-tasks have custom fields added before creation.

Increased responsiveness

Previously it was possible for the connector to require a sync when in offline mode, or when rendering the task editor, which resulted in delays in the user interface. This has now been fixed.

The 3.3.0 release focuses on usability issues, aiming to make connector simpler to use and closer to the brower-based MantisBT experience.

Repository dialog improvements

We now recognized when the task repository returns a HTTP redirect, which usually signals that another location should be specified. The user is properly notified, instead of being presented an error dialog.

As you might notice from the above screenshot, we no longer require you to enter the full path to the repository location. Although we support the old setting, we encourage you to enter just the base path to your MantisBT installation.

Moving towards a more automatic style of configuration also means that this is the last version which will support MantisBT installations older than 1.1 . So for the 3.4.0 release we will not support MantisBT 1.0 anymore.

When validating a repository which have know problems which can lead to data loss the user is warned.

Edit task relations for existing tasks

It is now possible to edit relations for tasks which are submitted to the repository. Previously this was only available for unsubmitted tasks.

Much improved progress reporting

The progress dialogs now reflect the correct state when synchronising queries. Previously it would stall at 0%, and not display progress when queries or tasks changes were processed.

Hide ETA and projection when disabled

The ETA and projection fields can be disabled from the MantisBT configuration. If they are, we will not show them anymore.

Version 3.2.0 is a major feature release, comprising of performance enhancements, complete support for localised MantisBT repositories and better support for repository-configured settings.

Performance enhancements

Refreshing the repository configuration is usually slow due to large number of configuration settings that are retrieved. A first step towards making this faster is to implement refreshing the configuration of a single project only. This feature is now implemented and you can refresh only a single project’s attributes using the corresponding task editor button .

In our tests this cuts down synchronization time from 28 seconds to 6 seconds for a MantisBT installation with 16 projects.

Complete support for localised repositories

We now consider support for localised repositories complete. If it works for an English installation, it should work for any other installation. This includes repository attribute values, mapping priorities and resolutions and task list decorations.

Please note that task attributes will not be properly displayed in certain circumstances, due to a bug in the MantisBT SOAP API – see Troubleshooting: empty attributes in task editor for more details and possible fixes. The good news is that this has already been fixed in MantisBT and will be available in the next stable release.

Better support for repository-configured defaults

All configurable default values for fields ( severity , steps to reproduce etc ) are now preselected when a new task is created. Also, the ‘resolve as’ action preselects the configured status from the repository, rather than defaulting to the current status of the task.

Repository validation enhancements

The unknown error dialog we recently introduces was relatively uncut and appeared in too many circumstances. We know have better detection of predefined error cases and in consequence do not show the dialog that often. In addition, there is a real hyperlink which points to the Mylyn-Mantis troubleshooting page.

We’re confident that this is the best release to date, so download it and give it a spin. If you encounter any issues, let us know through our bugtracker or support forum.