We are excited to see, that the latest release of the open source project management and bug tracker tool Redmine is providing some great upgrades. The developer community processed 143 issues for this release (including bug fixes, patches and new features).
What has been done under surface is the following: From now on Ruby support < v2.5 has been dropped and Ruby v3.x is supported.
Due to the fact, that most OpenID providers discontinued their service OpenID support has been dropped with this version as well.
Redmine is now based on Rails 6.1, which supports modern technologies and will sure have a positive impact on performance. The switch was necessary because security updates are only available for newer versions.
Learn more about the Ruby on Rails 6.1 release
Key improvements released in Redmine version 5
Next to implementing patches and fixing bugs there have been implemented also a large number of features. These are just a few highlights from the 70+ improvements in this release.
Two factor authentication improvements
Starting with improvements in the accounts / authentication section the new Redmine version 5 allows additional settings for 2FA (Two factor authentication) regarding users with administration permissions or certain user groups.
The feature has already been part of Redmine some time ago and has now been improved further.
You are now even able to see in the user list, what users have enabled 2FA. This is a useful little improvment, as API authentication is not covered by two-factor authentication. Also new in this version is, that users who have two-factor authentication enabled are not able to use the API by authenticating with user name and password. This basic authentication method will be disabled for security reasons.
redmine_mention plugin obsolet
With the mention (@user) option to address a special user via mentioning the user name in text areas of issues and wiki pages it is now possible to send e-Mail notifications to mentioned persons. To notify the user, that it has been mentioned.
This new features makes the redmine_mention plugin obsolet.
New CommonMark Markdown text formatting
In this release a new text formatting named CommonMark Markdown (endorsed by organizations like Gitlab and GitHub) is being introduced as third formatting option. A strongly specified, highly compatible implementation of Markdown.
It does not yet replace the existing one, because this formatter does not insert hard breaks. But it could become the default one over time.
Learn more about CommonMarker on GitHub.
Set default issue custom query list
You can now specifiy a custom query for your issue list and make it a default query for your system wide issue list. All you have to do is go to your Redmine settings Information section and choose it as your Default Query there.
This default issue custom query can also be set in your user account, if you wish. This feature, available in Redmine 5.0. can be set at three levels: system wide, project related and user related.
This would also be a nice feature for the other query lists like spent time entries. Maybe it will also be implemented for those areas as well in one of the upcoming Redmine versions.
See full Roadmap with all new version issues on redmine.org. Our plugins support Redmine 5 from plugin v3.0.6 onwards (scheduled for summer 2022). By then, the new Redmine Major Release should be available in a more stable v5x. Which means the new introduced functions should be reliably usable, the first “Children’s diseases” should be fixed and all language files should be complete for a proper usage. Stay tuned.
Redmine - Open Source Project Management Software
Redmine is a free, web-based project management software that provides project teams of all kinds with extensive functions. In addition to user and project management, users have access to discussion forums, wikis and task management. Redmine is a good alternative to commercial applications. Because companies can scale more cost-effectively and are not tied to specific vendors or limited user licences. If you want to learn more about Redmine, you can find extensive information at “redmine.org”.