Release Announcement: XNAT 1.8.6, CS 3.3, and more

XNAT 1.8.6 Is Now Available

XNAT 1.8.6 has been released and is ready to install. This version of XNAT includes several important updates, but also includes an important caveat for XNATs running custom-developed plugins and if you are using Container Service and/or ML plugins, you will need to update these as well (see below for more). Here is a quick overview of what is included.

Critical Bugfixes:

• Fixed steep performance issues that can arise on large XNATs from cleaning up unshared scan data
• Fixed a bug that blocked image session importing when no DICOM SCP Receivers have been defined
• Fixed a dependency on the Container Service plugin that could block auto-archiving behavior on XNAT systems without this plugin installed  

Other improvements include:

• Bugfixes and improvements affecting image session imports
• UI improvements, including the ability to customize available search tabs on the home page
• Backend and security improvements, including upgraded dependency libraries

And plenty more. Review the XNAT 1.8.6 release notes for a full listing of updates.

Known Issues Affecting Certain XNAT Plugins: 
The Container Service plugin and ML plugin suite were found to have issues related to the Jackson dependency library upgrade that can block XNAT 1.8.6 from launching. These issues were easily resolved, but have been detailed here so that developers of custom plugins can avoid this pitfall: Troubleshooting XNAT 1.8.6 and Plugin Compatibility. 

For production instances of XNAT with affected custom plugins, we are offering an XNAT 1.8.5.2 release that only addresses the critical fixes mentioned above, and does not include the Jackson dependency upgrade. 

Upgrading is (fairly) easy!
The upgrade path from XNAT 1.8 to XNAT 1.8.6 is as easy as configuring your war file for the version of Tomcat you're running and dropping the new war file in place. If you are using Container Service and/or the ML plugin suite, you'll need to update these as well. Upgrading from the XNAT 1.7.x line is only mildly more arduous. See the XNAT Upgrade Instructions.

Related: XNAT Release Notes | XNAT Documentation

XNAT Container Service Plugin 3.3.0 Released!

New: Support for Command Secrets!

Container Service 3.3.0 offers the ability to make use of "Container Secrets". Commands can be defined with secret or sensitive values that can be passed into your containers without exposing those values to the users launching the containers. 

Other key improvements include:

• Deprecation of the Command Automation feature in favor of the XNAT Event Service – new command automations cannot be created, and existing automations can be migrated to Event Service subscriptions 
• Improved security by invalidating alias tokens upon container completion
• Improved user experience when editing Command JSON definitions
• Bugfixes affecting empty swarm constraints and streaming logs on Kubernetes containers
• Library upgrades for compatibility with XNAT 1.8.6

Container Service 3.3.0 requires XNAT 1.8.6 or later. See the updated Compatibility Matrix for full guidance on dependencies and feature parity.

Related: Container Service Documentation 

Additional Plugin Updates

XSync Plugin 1.5.0 is Released

XSync version 1.5.0 includes security updates and offers the ability to manually sync subject metadata to a remote server. XSync 1.5.0 is compatible with XNAT version 1.8.3 and later. For more details, see the XSync 1.5.0 Changelog. 

XNAT ML Plugin 1.0.2 and Datasets Plugin 1.0.2 are Released

The XNAT ML and Datasets plugins have been updated for compatibility with the Jackson dependency library upgrade in XNAT 1.8.6. No other new features or bugfixes were addressed. 

Related: XNAT Tools Documentation

Download the latest XNAT Software!

All up-to-date XNAT downloads are available at www.xnat.org/download