General Remarks

The Direct Certificate Discovery Tool (DCDT) v2.1 is a minor release. The main goal of the release is system correctness, but key usability enhancements, and fundamental codebase improvements have been included. DCDT v2.1.2 is a bug fix, specifically for an issue regarding the Linux package installation process (see DCDT-100).

New Features in v2.1

Certificate Testing Data Generator Utility (datagen)

The datagen utility allows users to easily generate all the testing x509 certificates needed for the various test cases, pre-configured for their unique deployment. Complete documentation of the utility can be found here.

Web App Configuration Generator Utility (configgen)

The configgen utility allows users to automatically generate the deployment-specific properties files needed by the DCDT web app. Complete documentation of the utility can be found here.

LDAP Testing Data Loader Utility (ldaploader)

The ldaploader utility allows users to automatically generate, and load the deployment-specific LDAP data for DCDT test cases. Complete documentation of the utility can be found here.

Direct Testing Data Loader Utility (dataloader)

The dataloader utility allows users to automatically generate, and load the deployment-specific LDAP data for DCDT test cases. Complete documentation of the utility can be found here.

Linux Package Manager-Based Installation From Source and Binaries

The DCDT tool deployment has been greatly eased by providing Debian Linux automated installation package. The package is used either by building them locally from source and using the dpkg command, or via binary download and install using the apt-get install command as described in the wiki.

Improvements/Enhancements

Source Tree Reorganization and Cleanup

In v2.1, the DCDT source tree was reorganized to conform to industry standards and best practices, with top-level folders branches, tags, and trunk, each used for its unique respective purpose (i.e., maintenance branches, milestone tags, and active "next release" development). Additionally, a tag was retroactively created for the previous version of the DCDT tool. Finally, binary build-generated artifacts (e.g., jar files), which were previously being stored in the source repository without need, but causing performance and storage inefficiencies, have all been removed.

Subsequent releases of the Tool, the source tree has been converted to Mercurial. The 2.1.2-RELEASE tag is available from Google Code.

Repair of Maven Build System

The command line maven build system was previously broken, and highly inefficient (e.g., made several redundant copies of the source tree intotarget/classes), but with v2.1 all major issues have been fixed and the build functions as expected.

Documentation Upgrades

In addition to a comprehensive wiki-based user guide, there is detailed documentation of the DCDT test cases and test deployment configuration.

Code Refactoring and Tech Stack Upgrades

While end users might not necessarily see the benefits of code refactoring and tech stack upgrades, they add substantial benefits to ease of system maintenance and development. Some of the chief changes with this release are:

• Added TestNG unit testing framework with annotations-driven Apache Directory Server integration. In the previous version of DCDT there were no unit tests.
• Unified web app on Struts Tiles.
• Removed all test case configuration hardcoding, and instead use XML configuration files.

Bug Fixes

All community-identified issues existing before, or added during the release were addressed. Open issues with associated details can be seen in the JIRA issue tracker here.

Known Issues from the 2.1 Release

A new version of the Java Direct RI is scheduled to be released after the Direct Virtual Connect-A-Thon on 2/20/13. Users who wish to test against DCDT before that release should obtain the February 11, 2013 2.1-SNAPSHOT. Previous versions of the Java Direct RI will not successfully pass all DCDT tests.

An updated version of DCDT will be released after the Java RI is released. Users are advised not to utilize the Java Direct RI instance that is bundled with DCDT for the "system under test", but rather should obtain the official Java Direct RI release when it becomes available, or obtain the snapshot as noted above.