This is the Release Candidate version of Akeeba Backup 7, marking the end of the beta period. Barring any show stopper issues the next stable version will be released between January 7th and 10th, 2020.
Upload to OVH now supports Keystone v3. This will be mandatory starting mid-January 2020.
An error in an early backup domain could result in a forever-running backup. This seems to have been an issue since at least 2015 but would manifest itself very rarely. We finally got enough information to reproduce and fix this.
DB connection errors wouldn't result in the backup failing, as it should be doing. This was due to an error propagation issue introduced on Beta 1.
Common PHP version warning scripts. All of our software will now include unified messaging about versions of PHP that have entered their Security Support stage of life, have recently gone End of Life, have gone End of Life a long while ago or are not supported at all by our software. This will help you better plan your PHP updates.
Reinstated pCloud support. We gave pCloud access to a dev site of ours and they were able to find and fix the bug in their OAuth2 server which prevented our clients from using the pCloud integration.
Improved Dark Mode. We reworked the entire Dark Mode CSS and added the necessary tweaks to make it look even better. Do note that we treat Dark Mode as an accessibility feature, not a design trend.
Improved PHP 7.4 compatibility. PHP 7.4 went stable around the time we released beta 1. We are now using it as our default development version of PHP which let us identify and resolve numerous compatibility issues with it. None of them was causing functional issues but we fixed them nonetheless since we consider full support for modern PHP a very important feature.
Improved Joomla 4 styling. This is considered work in progress since Joomla 4 is still in active development and its CSS is far from being anywhere near final.
Clearer message when setting decryption fails in CLI backup script. Previously we stated that your PHP CLI didn't support encryption even when it was not the case (e.g. the decryption key had changed since you last saved the backup profile). The new messages convey the actual failure reason.
Removed all Javascript eval calls with calls to the JSON library. These were leftovers from a bygone era and triggering false positives in some malware scanners.
The database dump was broken with some versions of PCRE. Newer versions of PCRE, like the one used in Ubuntu 18.04 and later or most PHP 7.4 builds, silenty dropped support of a feature we were using in the new backup engine, causing database dumps to fail. We are now automatically detecting this and applying a workaround without any perceptible performance impact.
Site Transfer Wizard was broken on case sensitive filesystems. Sorry about that. Apparently updating the Mac which was used to run the tests changed its filesystem to case-insensitive, meaning we missed that bug. We changed our testing process to use a case-sensitive Linux machine instead.
ANGIE: Options to remove AddHandler lines on restoration. Have you ever restored a site on a different server only to find that it either not loads or downloads the .php file as text? That's because your site was using an AddHandler line to tell your old server which PHP version to use. These are server-specific and the new server did not understand it. Now you can remove these lines on restoration to prevent this kind of issue. You may still have to go to your hosting control panel and select the PHP version depending on your host and whether its default PHP version is simply too old to be usable.
Fixed OAuth authentication flow. A bug prevented authentication with some remote storage providers such as Google Drive.
Fixed fatal error under Joomla 3.8.x. There was a wrong bit of inline documentation about the deprecation status of some Joomla APIs used by Akeeba Backup. We accidentally used a version of them that's only available on Joomla 3.9, thinking they also exist in 3.8. The change was reverted.
New major version 7. Please consult our announcement for an overview of the new features and changes. It's just too much to include in these release notes! The release notes only cover what was added after Beta 1.
We only officially support the latest stable branch of Joomla!. At the time of this writing it is Joomla! 3.9.
Our software should still run on Joomla! 3.8 or later, including 3.8 and 3.9. These versions are not actively supported by us or the Joomla! project anymore. We strongly advise you to run the latest available version of Joomla! for security reasons. Older versions of Joomla! have known major security issues which are being actively exploited to hack sites.
We only officially support using our software with PHP 5.6, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3 or 7.4.
We strongly advise you to run either of the two latest available version branches of PHP on a branch currently maintained by the PHP project for security and performance reasons. Older versions of PHP have known major security issues which are being actively exploited to hack sites and they have stopped receiving security updates, leaving you exposed to these issues. Moreover, they are slower, therefore consuming more server resources to perform the same tasks.
Kindly note that our policy is to officially support only the PHP versions which are not yet End Of Life per the official PHP project with a voluntarily extension of support for 6 to 9 months after they become End of Life. After that time we stop providing any support for these obsolete versions of PHP without any further notice. New version branches of PHP will be supported experimentally starting sometime during their Release Candidate phase and fully about 4 to 8 weeks after the first stable version of that branch is released.