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 and docs/LICENCE.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 0.3.1 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3)
50 ------------------------------------------------------
51
52 * Fixed empty namespace declarations on elements created with namespaceURI
53 set to None. Previously, such declarations were missing.
54 * Changed createDocument so that the root element has no namespaceURI if
55 None is specified.
56
57 New in libxml2dom 0.3 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2.4)
58 ------------------------------------------------------
59
60 * Imposed much stricter tests on strings used with the libxml2dom API.
61 Strings given as arguments to methods and functions must now only contain
62 ASCII characters; any other character data must be provided as Unicode
63 objects. This change fixes various issues with XPath expressions, and
64 quite probably various other things.
65 * Fixed parentNode on Document objects (which caused xml.dom.ext.PrettyPrint
66 to crash).
67 * Added some support for the doctype attribute and related information.
68 * libxml2dom is now licensed under the LGPL - see docs/COPYING.txt for
69 details.
70
71 New in libxml2dom 0.2.4 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2.3)
72 --------------------------------------------------------
73
74 * Fixed Unicode conversions in the Node's xpath method.
75
76 New in libxml2dom 0.2.3 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2.2)
77 --------------------------------------------------------
78
79 * Fixed the parse function's docstring.
80 * Added the owner element to obtained attribute nodes.
81 * Fixed Debian package changelog distribution identifiers.
82
83 New in libxml2dom 0.2.2 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2.1)
84 --------------------------------------------------------
85
86 * Fixed exception raising in parseURI, adding a docstring to explain the
87 current limitations around HTML parsing.
88
89 New in libxml2dom 0.2.1 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2)
90 ------------------------------------------------------
91
92 * Moved libxml2macro script to the tools directory.
93 * Added getElementsByTagNameNS.
94 * Added a normalize implementation.
95 * Added HTML parsing support.
96 * Added prettyprinting support.
97 * Fixed parseURI.
98 * Introduced better testing for Unicode objects, especially since things
99 like rdflib like to subclass the unicode type, and it might be more
100 convenient to detect such subclasses and convert their values
101 automatically.
102 * Improved some of the API documentation.
103 * Introduced better suppression of warnings, network access, and other
104 potentially intrusive libxml2 features.
105 * Reorganised the documentation, expanding the README.txt file at the
106 expense of the HTML documentation, but removing older, less relevant
107 information.
108 * Added Debian package support.
109
110 New in libxml2dom 0.2 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.1.3)
111 ------------------------------------------------------
112
113 * Adopted libxml2macro code within the libxml2dom classes, removing any
114 dependencies on the libxml2 module - this makes everything much faster
115 and virtually removes any necessity to use libxml2macro.
116 * Improved attribute and document node handling.
117 * Introduced document reference management.
118 * Introduced NodeList wrapper objects.
119
120 New in libxml2dom 0.1.3 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.1.2)
121 --------------------------------------------------------
122
123 * Fixed createElement.
124 * Introduced experimental libxml2macro tools, tests and libraries.
125
126 New in libxml2dom 0.1.2 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.1.1)
127 --------------------------------------------------------
128
129 * Fixed getAttributeNode and getAttributeNodeNS.
130 * Added comment node creation.
131 * Fixed empty namespace usage with elements and attributes.
132 * Introduced usage of the libxml2 file and memory parsing features.
133 * Introduced suppression of DTD retrieval and validation as the default
134 behaviour.
135 * Added experimental XPath method support.
136
137 New in libxml2dom 0.1.1
138 -----------------------
139
140 * Fixed text node creation.
141 * Fixed setAttributeNS.
142 * Added encoding parameters to convenience methods.
143 * Added the missing previousSibling property.
144 * Added release number to the package.
145
146 Release Procedures
147 ------------------
148
149 Update the libxml2dom/__init__.py and libxml2dom/macrolib/__init__.py
150 __version__ attributes.
151 Change the version number and package filename/directory in the documentation.
152 Change code examples in the documentation if appropriate.
153 Update the release notes (see above).
154 Update the package release notes (in the packages directory).
155 Check the setup.py file and ensure that all package directories are mentioned.
156 Check the release information in the PKG-INFO file and in the package
157 changelog (and other files).
158 Tag, export.
159 Archive, upload.
160 Make packages (see below).
161 Update PyPI, PythonInfo Wiki, Vaults of Parnassus entries.
162
163 Making Packages
164 ---------------
165
166 To make Debian-based packages:
167
168 1. Create new package directories under packages if necessary.
169 2. Make a symbolic link in the distribution's root directory to keep the
170 Debian tools happy:
171
172 ln -s packages/ubuntu-hoary/python2.4-libxml2dom/debian/
173
174 3. Run the package builder:
175
176 dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot
177
178 4. Locate and tidy up the packages in the parent directory of the
179 distribution's root directory.