drupal 8.6.0

This is a minor version (feature release) of Drupal 8 and is ready for use on production sites. Learn more about Drupal 8 and the Drupal 8 release cycle.

This minor release provides new improvements and functionality without breaking backward compatibility (BC) for public APIs. There may be changes in internal APIs and experimental modules that require updates to contributed and custom modules and themes per Drupal core's backwards compatibility and experimental module policies. Developers should review the Drupal 8.6.x change records for information on API additions and internal backwards compatibility breaks.

Minor releases may include string changes and additions. Translators can review the latest translation status on localize.drupal.org.

These release notes provide important update information for Drupal 8 site owners. You can also read about the new features in Drupal 8.6.0.

Important update information

Site update and module owners planning to update to Drupal 8.6 should take note of the following important issues:

• This is the first release of Drupal 8 to offer a fully supported migration path from Drupal 7. Several changes were needed to Migrate APIs to make this possible:

  • Multilingual migrations are now disabled unless the new experimental module for them is enabled
  • Temporary file migrations have been removed for Drupal 7 migrations. This should not impact any standard migration because temporary files are by nature ephemeral and were not supposed to be migrated. See the change record for information on temporary files and Drupal 6 migrations.
  • Several methods on MigrateFieldInterface have been changed to make it more self-documenting. Contributed and custom modules may need to update their implementations. Duplicating the methods will allow modules to work with both 8.5.x and 8.6.x.
• #2786577: The Views integration Datetime Range fields should extend the views integration for regular Datetime fields. In previous versions of Drupal 8, date time range fields didn't have the same views features as other datetime fields. Because the previous filter had different operations to those available for datetime fields an update hook transforms the operations to the new format. The update hook will list the views that were updated. Site builders/developers/admins should check these views to make sure that the filter operation is appropriate. For more information on the changes made to filters, see the change record on this Views Datetime change.
   
• The configuration installer will now install optional configuration when it has a recursive dependency on other optional configuration being installed at the same time. This change should not require changes from module authors or site owners, but site owners should take note that additional configuration may now be installed that will be added to their site config imports or exports.
   
• Until Drupal 8.5, a taxonomy term's parent entity reference field was nonstandard: it stored in a separate database table, its Views integration was brittle, blocked Migrate support for taxonomy terms, and prevented REST support for working for this field. This has all been resolved by making the field a standard entity reference field. Updates may be needed for modules that queried the table taxonomy_term_hierarchy table directly.
   
• The editorial workflow configuration has been moved from Content Moderation into the Standard profile. This means that install profiles and distributions relying on this configuration should add it to their own profiles, as it will no longer be installed automatically with Content Moderation.
   
• Taxonomy terms are now have a published field to allow for moderation workflows. In most cases, the field will be installed automatically; however, if your site or module already defines a taxonomy field with that name, read the change record for details on how to update your site.
   
• REST and API-first changes:
  • HAL and JSON normalizers now support map and field property types. See the change record for the map and field normalizers to understand the addition data exposed to API-first applications for fields like link fields. Modules and applications relying on this functionality can remove any shims previously needed to support the functionality.
  • It’s now possible to upload files via the REST API! There’s a new File Upload REST resource plugin that, once enabled, allows one to upload a file of any size, creates a File entity that can be referenced from a file, image or media field. To support this change, we had to remove the HAL module's FileEntityNormalizer::demormalize() method, which included data integrity and security risks. If your module used this method, you should read the change record on REST file uploads and update your module accordingly.
  • Specialized entity reference fields that have additional properties, such as the image field’s width and height properties are now also present in the REST API’s output.
• Automated testing changes:
  • Contributed module authors should take note that certain deprecation warnings are no longer skipped by the core testing API, which means that automated tests that raise these warnings will now fail until the deprecated code is replaced (preferred) or until the test is marked as @legacy.
  • Prior to our end of support for PHP 5.5 add 5.6, Drupal 8 testsbots must still test on old, unsupported PHPUnit versions to test those PHP 5 versions. From now on, PHPUnit 6 will be used for or PHP 7.0+ testing. Site owners using PHPUnit 4 on a PHP 7 platform will see and should address this message:
    

    PHPUnit testing framework version 6 or greater is required when running on PHP 7.0 or greater. Run the command 'composer run-script drupal-phpunit-upgrade' in order to fix this.
    

    See the change record for this PHPUnit testing change for more information.

  • Some PHPUnit-based tests accidentally extended from WebTestBase or TestBase (the old SimpleTest APIs). To fix this, such PHPUnit Tests tests will now fail automatically if they incorrect API. Module developers with tests that fail for this reason should switch to extending the PHPUnit APIs like BrowserTestBase to resolve the issue.
  • #2869825: Leverage JS for JS testing (using nightwatch)
• Coding standards changes:
  • #2937853: Fix 'Drupal.Formatting.MultipleStatementAlignment' coding standard
  • #2978964: Use Prettier for formatting core JavaScript
• Drupal 8 will officially drop support for PHP 5.5 and 5.6 in less than a year, on March 7, 2019. In order to give site owners as much notice as possible, users will see a warning on installation and on the status report page if the host is running a version of PHP older than 7.0. We recommend you plan to update to a host with PHP 7.1 or higher soon, to ensure you have sufficient time to resolve any issues that may impact your Drupal site or other applications. (See the Drupal 8 PHP requirements page for more information on recommended PHP versions.)
   
• Important: If you have not already upgraded to previous minor versions, read the release notes for them as well. Drupal 8.5.0 shipped with an updated Symfony and changes to PHPUnit integration, file permissions requirements among other things. Drupal 8.4.0 included major version updates for Symfony, jQuery, and jQuery UI and is no longer compatible with older versions of Drush.
   
• Developers should review the Drupal 8.6.x change records for information on API additions and internal backwards compatibility breaks.
   

Important bug fixes

The following issues are fixed in Drupal 8.6.0:

• #2976335: Use Zend-Feed's standalone extension managers to prevent sites breaking
• A regression since 8.5.0's release has been resolved for: #2952962: Block visibility setting tab for Roles not showing
• #2557299: Any AJAX call disregards machine name verification when AJAX is used and leads to a fatal error
• #2930101: i18n / statistics - node counter not updated for translations
• To resolve a regression where effects could not be added to image styles through the UI, changes were needed to the EntityListBuilder destination handling for entity operation links. This may cause issues with list builders with custom redirects.
• #2662932: Fix file upload progress bar.

Known issues

There are currently no known regressions in this release.

Search the issue queue for all known issues.

All fixes since the last minor release

Search all commits in the 8.6.x branch.