1 Introduction
2 ------------
3
4 See docs/index.html for the libxml2dom documentation.
5
6 Contact, Copyright and Licence Information
7 ------------------------------------------
8
9 The current Web page for libxml2dom at the time of release is:
10
11 http://www.boddie.org.uk/python/libxml2dom.html
12
13 Copyright and licence information can be found in the docs directory - see
14 docs/COPYING.txt for more information.
15
16 Dependencies
17 ------------
18
19 libxml2 Tested with libxml2 2.6.17.
20 Use --with-python=<path to python executable> if building from
21 source. Previous releases of libxml2 in the 2.6 series may work,
22 but releases before 2.6.16 are not recommended.
23 Python Tested with Python 2.4.
24 Python releases from 2.2 onwards should be compatible with
25 libxml2dom. The principal requirement from such releases is the
26 new-style class support which permits the use of properties in
27 the libxml2dom implementation.
28
29 Testing
30 -------
31
32 Some of the tests require libxml2macro.py to be run on the test source code
33 first. Read the docstrings for the various test files before attempting to run
34 any of them. See also docs/NOTES_libxml2macro.txt for more information. Note
35 that such tests are retained for historical purposes and/or curiosity since
36 libxml2macro.py is no longer supported.
37
38 Issues
39 ------
40
41 Use of importNode seems to cause some kind of memory issue, probably related
42 to nodes being shared across documents. This was observed in libxml2 2.6.0 but
43 appears to be fixed in libxml2 2.6.16.
44
45 Even compared to minidom, importNode may seem very slow (even the
46 libxml2dom.macrolib implementation, too). A way is needed to get libxml2 to do
47 the node copying itself.
48
49 New in libxml2dom 0.2.4 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2.3)
50 --------------------------------------------------------
51
52 * Fixed Unicode conversions in the Node's xpath method.
53
54 New in libxml2dom 0.2.3 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2.2)
55 --------------------------------------------------------
56
57 * Fixed the parse function's docstring.
58 * Added the owner element to obtained attribute nodes.
59 * Fixed Debian package changelog distribution identifiers.
60
61 New in libxml2dom 0.2.2 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2.1)
62 --------------------------------------------------------
63
64 * Fixed exception raising in parseURI, adding a docstring to explain the
65 current limitations around HTML parsing.
66
67 New in libxml2dom 0.2.1 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2)
68 ------------------------------------------------------
69
70 * Moved libxml2macro script to the tools directory.
71 * Added getElementsByTagNameNS.
72 * Added a normalize implementation.
73 * Added HTML parsing support.
74 * Added prettyprinting support.
75 * Fixed parseURI.
76 * Introduced better testing for Unicode objects, especially since things
77 like rdflib like to subclass the unicode type, and it might be more
78 convenient to detect such subclasses and convert their values
79 automatically.
80 * Improved some of the API documentation.
81 * Introduced better suppression of warnings, network access, and other
82 potentially intrusive libxml2 features.
83 * Reorganised the documentation, expanding the README.txt file at the
84 expense of the HTML documentation, but removing older, less relevant
85 information.
86 * Added Debian package support.
87
88 New in libxml2dom 0.2 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.1.3)
89 ------------------------------------------------------
90
91 * Adopted libxml2macro code within the libxml2dom classes, removing any
92 dependencies on the libxml2 module - this makes everything much faster
93 and virtually removes any necessity to use libxml2macro.
94 * Improved attribute and document node handling.
95 * Introduced document reference management.
96 * Introduced NodeList wrapper objects.
97
98 New in libxml2dom 0.1.3 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.1.2)
99 --------------------------------------------------------
100
101 * Fixed createElement.
102 * Introduced experimental libxml2macro tools, tests and libraries.
103
104 New in libxml2dom 0.1.2 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.1.1)
105 --------------------------------------------------------
106
107 * Fixed getAttributeNode and getAttributeNodeNS.
108 * Added comment node creation.
109 * Fixed empty namespace usage with elements and attributes.
110 * Introduced usage of the libxml2 file and memory parsing features.
111 * Introduced suppression of DTD retrieval and validation as the default
112 behaviour.
113 * Added experimental XPath method support.
114
115 New in libxml2dom 0.1.1
116 -----------------------
117
118 * Fixed text node creation.
119 * Fixed setAttributeNS.
120 * Added encoding parameters to convenience methods.
121 * Added the missing previousSibling property.
122 * Added release number to the package.
123
124 Release Procedures
125 ------------------
126
127 Update the libxml2dom/__init__.py and libxml2dom/macrolib/__init__.py
128 __version__ attributes.
129 Change the version number and package filename/directory in the documentation.
130 Change code examples in the documentation if appropriate.
131 Update the release notes (see above).
132 Update the package release notes (in the packages directory).
133 Check the setup.py file and ensure that all package directories are mentioned.
134 Check the release information in the PKG-INFO file and in the package
135 changelog (and other files).
136 Tag, export.
137 Archive, upload.
138 Make packages (see below).
139 Update PyPI, PythonInfo Wiki, Vaults of Parnassus entries.
140
141 Making Packages
142 ---------------
143
144 To make Debian-based packages:
145
146 1. Create new package directories under packages if necessary.
147 2. Make a symbolic link in the distribution's root directory to keep the
148 Debian tools happy:
149
150 ln -s packages/ubuntu-hoary/python2.4-libxml2dom/debian/
151
152 3. Run the package builder:
153
154 dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot
155
156 4. Locate and tidy up the packages in the parent directory of the
157 distribution's root directory.