Drupal Release: 8.4.4

TL;DR

Drupal 8.4.4 is a maintenance release that addresses several critical bugs, improves PHP 7.2 compatibility, and enhances various core functionalities. This update focuses on fixing issues with UTF-8 encoding in email headers, file upload handling, content moderation, and translation management. It also includes numerous documentation improvements and code standard fixes to ensure better developer experience and code quality.

Highlight of the Release

• Fixed UTF-8 encoding in email headers for site names with special characters
• Resolved critical data loss issue when concurrently editing translations
• Added PHP 7.2 compatibility improvements
• Fixed file upload limit handling to prevent widget disappearance
• Improved content moderation and revision handling
• Enhanced migration plugin documentation and functionality

Migration Guide

No specific migration steps are required for this maintenance release. This is a standard bugfix release that should be safe to apply to existing Drupal 8.4.x sites.

If you're using PHP 7.2, this update is particularly important as it includes compatibility fixes for array counting operations.

For developers working with migrations from Drupal 7, note that the datetime field migration has been fixed to correctly set the datetime_type.

Upgrade Recommendations

This release contains important bug fixes and PHP 7.2 compatibility improvements, so upgrading is recommended for all Drupal 8.4.x sites, especially those:

1. Using PHP 7.2 or planning to upgrade to PHP 7.2
2. With multilingual content where translations are frequently edited
3. Experiencing issues with file uploads or content moderation
4. Using email functionality with non-ASCII characters in the site name

The update process follows the standard Drupal minor version update procedure:

1. Back up your database and site files
2. Put the site into maintenance mode
3. Update Drupal core codebase
4. Run the database update script (update.php)
5. Take the site out of maintenance mode

No special steps are required for this maintenance release.

Bug Fixes

• UTF-8 Encoding: Fixed issue where site name was not properly UTF-8 encoded in email headers (#2717965)
• File Uploads: Resolved incorrect handling of file upload limit exceeded, which caused file widget to disappear (#1489692)
• Content Moderation:
  • Fixed error when calling ModerationStateFieldItemList::updateModeratedEntity() if entity doesn't have workflow (#2932551)
  • Fixed ModerationInformation::getLatestRevisionId returning access-specific results (#2932154)
  • Fixed undefined offset notice in _quickedit_entity_is_latest_revision() during content preview (#2914938)
• Entity Management: Fixed exception when trying to save a new revision after manually setting the original revision ID (#2928778)
• Configuration Management:
  • Fixed config sync throwing warnings when directory is not writable (#2880445)
  • Improved config import change profile messaging (#2862207)
• Translation: Fixed critical bug where concurrently editing two translations of a node could result in data loss for non-translatable fields (#2837022)
• AJAX: Fixed duplicate AJAX wrapper around file fields (#2346893)
• Module Installation: Fixed recursive rebuild caused by installing admin_toolbar_tools module (#2930715)
• Migration: Fixed datetime_type not being set correctly when migrating datetime fields from D7 (#2894068)
• UI Elements: Changed 'quote' to 'blockquote' in off-canvas.base.css (#2899708)
• Field Handling:
  • Fixed missing schema for timestamp field type value (#2931294)
  • Added default value for aggregator feed "refresh" field (#2927563)
• Messages: Fixed badly constructed link in drupal_set_message (#2913864)

New Features

• Added --suppress-deprecations option to run-tests.sh script for better testing workflow
• Improved documentation for migration plugins including SqlBase, DrupalSqlBase, EntityFieldStorageConfig, and EntityFieldInstance
• Updated references from 'iterator' plugin to 'sub_process' in migration system

Security Updates

• Fixed potential data loss vulnerability when concurrently editing translations of content
• Improved handling of file uploads to prevent potential security issues
• Enhanced validation of entity revisions to prevent unauthorized access to content

Performance Improvements

• Improved entity revision handling to prevent unnecessary operations
• Enhanced configuration management system to handle permissions more efficiently
• Optimized AJAX handling for file fields to prevent duplicate wrappers

Impact Summary

Drupal 8.4.4 is a maintenance release that addresses several important bugs and compatibility issues. The most significant fixes include proper UTF-8 encoding for site names in email headers, prevention of data loss when editing translations concurrently, improved file upload limit handling, and PHP 7.2 compatibility updates.

For site administrators, this release improves email functionality with international characters and provides clearer messaging for configuration management. Content editors will benefit from fixed preview functionality and better handling of translations and file uploads. Developers gain improved documentation, test infrastructure updates, and PHP 7.2 compatibility.

This release demonstrates Drupal's commitment to multilingual support, robust content management, and maintaining compatibility with modern PHP versions. While it doesn't introduce major new features, it significantly improves stability and reliability for existing functionality.