We are excited to share an early preview of some major enhancements coming in Seafile 11.0. This release focuses on streamlining Seafile’s architecture and paving the way for richer collaboration features.
Change of user identity
Previous Seafile versions directly used a user’s email address or SSO identity as their internal user ID.
Seafile 11.0 introduces virtual user IDs - random, internal identifiers like “adc023e7232240fcbb83b273e1d73d36@auth.local”. For new users, a virtual ID will be generated instead of directly using their email. A mapping between the email and virtual ID will be stored in the “profile_profile” database table.
For SSO users, in the old version, the identify from the SSO provider will be stored directly.
In the new version, for SSO users, a virtual ID will be generated instead of using the SSO identity directly. The mapping between SSO ID and virtual ID is stored in the “social_auth_usersocialauth” table.
The benefits of this change:
- Users can change their external email or SSO ID more easily. Only the mapping table needs to be updated, not every instance of their ID across the system.
- Allows a single user to login via multiple methods, by mapping their different external IDs to a single internal virtual ID.
Overall this brings more flexibility to handle user accounts and identity changes. Existing users will use the same old ID.
Reimplementation of LDAP Integration
Previous Seafile versions handled LDAP authentication in the ccnet-server component. In Seafile 11.0, LDAP is reimplemented within the Seahub Python codebase.
LDAP configuration has been moved from ccnet.conf to seahub_settings.py. The ccnet_db.LDAPImported table is no longer used - LDAP users are now stored in ccnet_db.EmailUsers along with other users.
Benefits of this new implementation:
- Improved compatibility across different systems. Python code is more portable than the previous C implementation.
- Consistent handling of users whether they login via LDAP or other methods like email/password.
File Activities Now Enabled in Community Edition
Previous Seafile Professional editions included the seaf-events component for tracking file activities and metadata. This has now been incorporated into the community edition in Seafile 11.0.
With seaf-events, the community edition gains several powerful features:
- File activities - See historical changes, edits on files.
- Smart links - Links to files are preserved even if the file is renamed or moved.
- Improved versioning - Better handling of revisions, especially for Office documents.
- Notification emails - Option to periodically send emails about unread notifications.
Bringing seaf-events into the Community server aligns the feature set across both editions. Users benefit from having robust activity tracking and metadata management available in all Seafile deployments.
A New Collaborative Online Editor - SeaDoc (alpha)
Seafile 11.0 introduces a powerful new collaborative document editor - SeaDoc (alpha version).
SeaDoc enables seamless co-editing and workflow management for documents stored in Seafile. Key features include:
- Intuitive editing - An expressive editor optimized for productivity
- Content workflows - Review and approve changes to control document evolution
- Inter-document linking - Connect related documents together
- AI integrations - Harness AI for content generation, summarization and management
- APIs - Automate document creation and processing via comprehensive APIs
SeaDoc excels at:
- Authoring in-depth technical/product manuals and documentation
- Creating and managing knowledge base articles and wikis
- Building internal documentation portals
With SeaDoc you can co-author, manage and publish high-quality documents directly from Seafile. Streamline your content creation and digitize your organization’s knowledge base.
The main editing interface:
Histories and changes:
Tables:
Block level operations:
Compared to OnlyOffice/CollaboraOnline, SeaDoc is optimized for lightweight text documents like meeting notes, wiki pages, technical docs etc. The focus is on simplicity, speed, and seamless knowledge management within Seafile. SeaDoc introduces capabilities like backlinks, and document networking on top of collaborative editing.
SQLite Database Support is dropped
Seafile 11.0 dropped using SQLite as the database. There are several reasons driving this change:
- Focus on collaborative features - SQLite’s limitations make advanced concurrency and locking difficult, which collaborative editing requires. Different Seafile components need simultaneous database access.
- Docker deployments - Our official Docker images do not support SQLite. MySQL is the preferred option.
- Migration difficulties - Migrating SQLite databases to MySQL via SQL translation is unreliable.
By removing SQLite support, we can concentrate development efforts on enabling robust real-time collaboration. We suggest sites currently on SQLite to plan an upgrade to MySQL before upgrading to version 11.0.
Enhancing the Seafile User Interface
Early 11.x maintenance releases will include various UI refinements to enhance consistency and usability:
- Cleaning up legacy interface elements
- Standardizing fonts, icons, and branding
- Improving mobile responsiveness
- Adding animations and microinteractions
These changes lay the groundwork for a major UI upgrade planned for Seafile 12.0.
Final
A beta version will be available in September within a few weeks.
Please let us know your thoughts on the proposed changes and what else you would like to see improved in Seafile!