Release Overview for 1.4.20

This page contains a high level description of the most notable changes in this release. For full details of user-visible changes, see the NEWS files in each module:

• ​xapian-core
• ​omega
• ​xapian-bindings

See also the full list of bug reports marked as fixed in this release.

Portability

• Fix to build with a C++20 compiler.

• Omega now requires PCRE2 instead of PCRE. The original PCRE is now unmaintained (last release was June 2021). In omega it's potentially used to process input from the internet, so security is a real concern hence we're switching to PCRE2.

scriptindex

• Process an incomplete final line from a dump file. Previously if the final line lacked a newline scriptindex would quietly ignore it (unless it was the only line).

• Numerous other improvements to scriptindex error and warning handling.

PHP7

• Add missing reference tracking. XapianEnquire now keeps a reference to the current XapianSorter object (if any). XapianQueryParser now keeps a reference to any set XapianFieldProcessor objects. Test coverage for keeping references to set functor objects is now more comprehensive.

Python3

• The configure probes for Python3 no longer use the deprecated distutils and imp modules (both of which are slated for removal in Python 3.12). We now use sysconfig to get the directory to install the xapian module to, which may result in it being installed in a different place (it should still work, but if you're packaging the bindings you may need to update the list of files to include in the package).