.TH "doc_news_2018-03-27_0_8_22_md" 3elektra "Fri Aug 4 2023" "Version 0.11.0" "Elektra" \" -*- nroff -*-
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.SH NAME
doc_news_2018-03-27_0_8_22_md \- 0\&.8\&.22 Release 

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guid: 4884a54f-996a-4564-a138-38a70166fed7
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author: Markus Raab
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pubDate: Tue, 27 Feb 2018 19:35:58 +0100
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shortDesc: Logo, INI, Lookup
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We are proud to release Elektra 0\&.8\&.22! In 429 commits, 8 authors changed 548 files with 60369 insertions(+), 6783 deletions(-)\&.
.SH "What is Elektra?"
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Elektra serves as a universal and secure framework to access configuration settings in a global, hierarchical key database\&. For more information, visit \fChttps://libelektra\&.org\fP\&.
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For a small demo see here:
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\fC\fP.PP
You can also read the news \fCon our website\fP
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You can read the \fCFOSDEM interview\fP and watch the \fCFOSDEM main talk\fP given recently\&.
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Elektra is now an official part of \fCHomebrew\fP\&.
.SH "Highlights"
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New Logo and Website Theme
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INI plugin greatly improved
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Notifications API and Bindings for Asynchronous I/O
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Plugin Processes
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Lookup with the Order Preserving Minimal Perfect Hash Map
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.SS "New Logo and Website Theme"
We are proud to present our new logo\&. It has a new shape and cooler colors\&.
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Thanks to Philipp Frei!
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We also gave the website a new look\&. It has the colors from the logo and new fonts (\fCLato\fP and \fCLibre Franklin\fP) that improve readability and add to a unique look\&. The restructured start page contributes to the new look as well\&.
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We also updated asciinema-player to 2\&.6\&.0\&.
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Thanks to Thomas Wahringer\&.
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We also fixed security issues in the Website due to an old version of jquery, thanks to Marvin Mall\&.
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Thanks to Bernhard Denner for keeping our infrastructure running\&.
.SS "INI plugin greatly improved"
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\fCdini\fP is no longer experimental anymore and adds the binary plugin\&.
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We added a crash test for the INI plugin that feeds the plugin with problematic input data we determined using \fCAFL\fP
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We fixed various small bugs that could potentially cause the INI plugin to crash and fixes the problems as reported by AFL
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The INI plugin now \fCconverts a section to a normal key-value pair\fP if you store a value inside it\&. This has the advantage that you will not \fClose data unexpectedly anymore\fP\&.
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The \fCINI plugin\fP should now read most key-value pairs containing delimiter characters (\fC=\fP) properly\&.
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Thanks to René Schwaiger!
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Nevertheless, we did not switch to INI as default format\&. This has some reasons:
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In many workflows, \fCdump\fP is the better choice: e\&.g\&. with \fCkdb editor\fP you can edit any parts of Elektra with any format (e\&.g\&. INI) more safely\&. (With the INI plugin in some of these situations metadata is wrongly shown\&.)
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The code base of INI is not fully tested and partly not well understood\&.
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We plan to switch to a newly written parser (most likely YAML) and want to avoid that users have two migrations\&. The migration from \fCdump\fP is easier (especially compared with INI) because the \fCdump\fP format is recognisable without ambiguity\&. (Thus the INI file parses nearly any file, it is hard to detect that a file is not INI)
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But for those who want to switch, the migration will be smooth: The \fCdini\fP plugin makes sure that old dump files are still being read\&. Only when writing out configuration files, configuration files are converted to INI\&. To change to INI during compilation, simply use:
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\fC-DKDB_DEFAULT_STORAGE=dini\fP
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Or simply switch for your installation with:
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 \fCsudo kdb change-default-storage dini\fP
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You can also mount INI (or dini) as root:
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 \fCsudo kdb mount default\&.ini / dini\fP
.SS "Notification API and Bindings for Asynchronous I/O"
This release contains an experimental implementation of Elektra's notification feature\&. This feature enables applications to get updates when configuration is changed at run-time\&. For more details see the preview tutorial at \fCdoc/tutorials/notifications\&.md\fP
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The \fCNotification API\fP is implemented by a new library called \fCelektra-notification\fP\&. To use the library you need the new internalnotification plugin\&. Since the plugin is experimental it needs to be enabled when building Elektra from source (e\&.g\&. by passing \fC-DPLUGINS='ALL;-EXPERIMENTAL;internalnotification'\fP to \fCcmake\fP)\&.
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New bindings for asynchronous I/O called 'I/O bindings' also have been added\&. These bindings allow Elektra's plugins and other parts to perform \fIasynchronous\fP operations\&. I/O bindings are opt-in for application developers\&. New features of Elektra that take advantage of I/O bindings will have fallbacks where viable\&. These fallbacks will use synchronous I/O thus keeping the status quo\&.
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This release includes an experimental I/O binding for \fCuv\fP\&. The interface for I/O bindings is currently experimental and might change in the future\&.
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Elektra's notification feature is not complete yet\&. So-called 'transport plugins' will be responsible for sending and receiving notifications using different protocols or libraries (like ZeroMQ or D-Bus)\&. These plugins will make use of the new I/O bindings\&. We plan to introduce the first transport plugins with the next release of Elektra\&.
.SS "Plugin Processes"
A new library called \fCpluginprocess\fP has been added\&. This library contains functions that aid in executing plugins in a separate process\&. This child process is forked from Elektra's main process each time such plugin is used and gets closed again afterwards\&. It uses a simple communication protocol based on a KeySet that gets serialized through a pipe via the \fCdump\fP plugin to orchestrate the processes\&.
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Such a behavior is useful for plugins which cause memory leaks to be isolated in an own process\&. Furthermore this is useful for runtimes or libraries that cannot be reinitialized in the same process after they have been used\&.
.SS "Lookup with the Order Preserving Minimal Perfect Hash Map"
The \fCksLookup (\&.\&.\&.)\fP has a new search algorithm, that acts as an alternative to the binary search\&. The Order Preserving Minimal Perfect Hash Map (OPMPHM) is a non-dynamic, randomized hash map and is very effective for mostly static configurations\&. The OPMPHM can be enabled for a search by passing the in \fCkdbproposal\&.h\fP defined option \fCKDB_O_OPMPHM\fP to the lookup\&. Be aware that if the KeySet changes often using the OPMPHM might not be a good idea, read more about the \fCOPMPHM\fP\&.
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When you are not sure if the OPMPHM will speed up you searches, wait for the next release, that one will include a hybrid search algorithm that combines the best properties of both search algorithms\&.
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To disable OPMPHM (e\&.g\&. on systems with tight memory constraints), you can pass \fC-DENABLE_OPTIMIZATIONS=OFF\fP
.SH "Other New Features"
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We added even more functionality, which could not make it to the highlights:
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The Web UI was greatly improved, thanks to Daniel Bugl The version of clusterd was increased from 1\&.0\&.0 to 1\&.1\&.0\&.
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Elektra is now part of the official \fCHomebrew repository\fP\&. We still provide a \fCtap\fP, if you want to install Elektra together with plugins or bindings that require additional libraries\&.
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The building and linking of the Haskell bindings and Haskell plugins has been \fCgreatly improved\fP\&.
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The invoke library can now \fCreport errors\fP upon opening/closing a plugin, thanks to Armin Wurzinger\&.
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The \fCYAML CPP plugin\fP does not require \fCBoost\fP anymore, if you installed \fCyaml-cpp 0\&.6\fP\&.
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Improved colored output in \fCkdb\fP tool\&.
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We added two build jobs: docker and haskell\&. Thanks to Bernhard Denner and Armin Wurzinger\&.
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\fCYAML CPP\fP does not write binary data to a config file, if you forget to load the \fCBase64 plugin\fP\&.
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\fCYAML CPP\fP now encodes empty binary keys as NULL values (\fC~\fP), and also adds the metakey \fCbinary\fP for such values automatically\&.
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.SH "Documentation"
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We improved the documentation in the following ways:
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We have \fCdocumented how you can setup a build node for Jenkins using a Docker container\fP We also provide an example Dockerfile based on Debian Stretch for that purpose, thanks to Armin Wurzinger\&.
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Document how \fCrlwrap\fP might be used for \fCkdb shell\fP\&.
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Fixed documentation in \fChosts\fP plugin\&.
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Greatly improved the \fClicense documentation\fP in \fCdebian/copyright\fP in the \fCdebian\fP branch, thanks to Thomas Wahringer\&.
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Various fixes in doc/METADATA\&.ini
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.SH "Compatibility"
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As always, the ABI and API of kdb\&.h is fully compatible, i\&.e\&. programs compiled against an older 0\&.8 version of Elektra will continue to work (ABI) and you will be able to recompile programs without errors (API)\&.
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We executed old test cases against the latest Elektra version and all tests passed\&.
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In \fCkdbinvoke\&.h\fP we changed the API so that \fCelektraInvokeOpen\fP and \fCelektraInvokeClose\fP can yield error messages\&.
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We added:
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the public headerfiles \fC\fBkdbnotification\&.h\fP\fP, \fC\fBkdbio\&.h\fP\fP, \fC\fBkdbiotest\&.h\fP\fP\&.
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the private headerfiles \fCkdbnotificationplugin\&.h\fP, \fC\fBkdbioprivate\&.h\fP\fP\&.
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.SH "Portability"
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Fix bash shebang of bash scripts, thanks to Jakub Jirutka
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Remove unportable unneeded asm, thanks to Timo Teräs and Jakub Jirutka
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Fixed syntax in shell recorder, thanks to René Schwaiger
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Used \fCmktemp\fP in \fCcheck_distribution\&.sh\fP to allow parallel run of test cases, thanks to Armin Wurzinger\&.
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.SH "Notes for Maintainer"
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These notes are of interest for people maintaining packages of Elektra:
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\fCdini\fP is no longer experimental\&.
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CMake: \fCBINDINGS\fP now behaves like \fCPLUGINS\fP By default now all MAINTAINED bindings except EXPERIMENTAL and DEPRECATED are included\&. For more details see \fC/doc/COMPILE\&.md\fP\&. To include both intercept bindings, you now need to write \fCINTERCEPT\fP, to only include getenv interception \fCintercept_env\fP\&. \fCintercept\fP in lower-case does not work anymore\&.
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The following files are new:
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Libs: \fClibelektra-notification\&.so\fP, \fClibelektra-io\&.so\fP, \fClibelektra-io-uv\&.so\fP, \fClibelektra-pluginprocess\&.so\fP
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Headers: \fCkdbgetenv\&.h\fP, \fC\fBkdbio\&.h\fP\fP, \fCkdbpluginprocess\&.h\fP
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Plugins: \fCbase64/Base64\&.pdf\fP
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Binaries: \fCgetenv\fP, \fCtest_context\fP, \fCtest_fork\fP, \fCtest_getenv\fP, \fCtest_ks_opmphm\fP, \fCtest_opmphm\fP
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Other: \fCelektra-io\&.pc\fP
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The following files were removed:
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Tests: \fCtestmod_semlock\fP
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.SH "Notes for Elektra's Developers"
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These notes are of interest for people developing Elektra:
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We now use \fCclang-reformat-5\&.0\fP for formatting\&. Please upgrade your clang\&.
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Build Agent \fCryzen v2\fP was added to speed up \fCjenkins build all please\fP, thanks to Armin Wurzinger\&.
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Travis maintenance (Qt 5 and other problems), thanks to René Schwaiger\&.
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\fCBINDINGS\fP was greatly improved and the CMake functions were simplified\&. Bindings now also have a \fCREADME\&.md\fP with metadata\&. A big thanks to Thomas Wahringer\&.
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Decision: Logging with \fCELEKTRA_LOG\fP is only for C/C++\&.
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Including \fC\fBkdberrors\&.h\fP\fP in a C++ files now also works, if you do not add the statement
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.nf
using namespace ckdb;
.fi
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before you import \fC\fBkdberrors\&.h\fP\fP\&.
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The CMake code for Elektra’s \fCQt-GUI\fP now detects the location of Qt 5 automatically if you installed Qt via Homebrew\&.
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All Shell Recorder tests should not now correctly restore your old configuration after you execute them, thanks to René Schwaiger\&.
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The \fCBase64 plugin\fP does not encode empty binary values in meta mode anymore\&. This update allows plugins such as YAML CPP to handle empty keys properly\&.
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.SH "Fixes"
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Many problems were resolved with the following fixes:
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\fCkdb global-umount\fP also removed other mountpoints
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We fixed \fCinternal inconsistency\fP in the CMake code of the \fCAugeas plugin\fP
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We fixed the \fChaskell bindings and plugins on Debian Stretch\fP and added a new build server job to test that in the future\&.
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Cleanup in list plugin, thanks to Thomas Wahringer
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The Shell Recorder now exports and imports the root of a mountpoint instead of the mountpoint itself\&. This change makes sure that Shell Recorder test do not change the configuration directly below the specified mountpoint\&.
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.SH "Get It!"
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You can download the release from \fChere\fP or \fCGitHub\fP
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The \fChashsums are:\fP
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name: elektra-0\&.8\&.22\&.tar\&.gz
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size: 5885118
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md5sum: 5cbd9e33daf51f6f33791ff3f99342a6
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sha1: 4954ff16cfe7dc69e45e6a748556262b8fb1a9fa
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sha256: 962598315619d5dff3a575d742720f076dc4ba3702bd01609bfb7a6ddb5d759f
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The release tarball is also available signed by me using GnuPG from \fChere\fP or \fCGitHub\fP
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Already built API documentation can be found \fConline\fP or \fCGitHub\fP\&.
.SH "Stay tuned!"
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Subscribe to the \fCRSS feed\fP to always get the release notifications\&.
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For any questions and comments, please contact the issue tracker \fCon GitHub\fP or me by email using elektra@markus-raab.org\&.
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\fCPermalink to this NEWS entry\fP
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For more information, see \fChttps://libelektra\&.org\fP
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Best regards, \fCElektra Initiative\fP