Magento Open Source 2.1 Release Candidate 3 (RC3) Release Notes

We are pleased to present Magento 2.1 Release Candidate 3 (RC3). This release candidate build is not intended for production purposes. Instead, it provides the development community opportunities to:

  • preview the new features and fixes that Magento 2.1 GA will contain

  • contribute to the Magento 2.1 code base by identifying unresolved issues

  • test your 2.0 extensions against 2.1

We welcome your participation in this process! Please open any Magento Open Source issues or Pull Requests on the Open Source GitHub repository. For more information on how to provide feedback and contribute on GitHub, see Code contributions.

Backward-incompatible changes are documented in Magento 2.1 Backward Incompatible Changes.

Highlights

Magento Open Source 2.1 includes several new and exciting features:

  • PayPal enhancements include PayPal in-context checkout and saved credit cards. In-context checkout helps to increase conversion rates 69 bps by allowing shoppers to pay with PayPal without leaving the merchant’s site. PayPal saved credit cards boost repeat purchases by allowing merchants to securely store credit card information with PayPal so customers do not need to re-enter it in checkout or when reordering items from the Admin interface.

  • Braintree enhancements enable merchants to qualify for the simplest set of PCI compliance requirements by using Braintree Hosted Fields to collect all sensitive cardholder information in checkout. Merchants retain complete control over their checkout style and layout because Braintree uses small, transparent iframes to replace individual payment fields. Merchants can now also access Braintree settlement reports from within the Magento Admin interface.

  • Improved management interfaces make it faster and easier to search for information in the Admin, set up global search synonyms, and create new product, category, and CMS content.

Fixed issues

Security enhancement

  • Magento no longer discloses sensitive information about the server when an invalid URL has been requested.

Performance enhancements

  • Category page performance has significantly improved when categories contain more than 30000 items.
  • Setting the Merge CSS Files option to Yes no longer reduces product performance. (GITHUB-4710)

Import/Export

  • Magento now successfully imports products with a “gift_message_available” parameter. Previously, Magento exported the wrong “gift_message_available” parameter, which resulted in a validation error.

Cache

  • Category menus now display as expected for installations using Varnish. (GITHUB-4540)
  • Varnish cache is no longer disabled due to HTML requests.
  • Magento now enables caches by default when upgrading by the command-line interface. (GITHUB-4707)
  • Magento no longer disables all cache types after you use the command-line interface to enable or disable modules. Previously, all cache types were disabled after you disabled or enabled modules through the command line interface.

Messages and documentation

  • Media Uploader error messages now make it clear the SVG file format is not supported. (GITHUB-2958)
  • The Swagger-generated docs for the REST API now display the property identifiers formatted as camelCaseFormat. (GITHUB-4925)
  • Magento now displays enhanced messages for cache management exceptions.

Payment methods

  • Magento no longer displays the Payflow Pro option for the Vault Provider field for countries where that option is unavailable.
  • Problems placing an order using the Payflow Pro payment method have been resolved.
  • You can now place an order using the Braintree Credit card as the payment method when 3D Secure Verification is enabled.

Miscellaneous

  • You can now re-install Magento and use a different Admin email address than you had previously used.
  • Using the Web Setup wizard to disable a module no longer results in a backup error. (GITHUB-3562)
  • The ProductsList widget now returns the identities of the products displayed by this widget.
  • Magento now retains special prices as expected for grouped products.
  • You can now use a custom template to successfully create New Account email for a new customer.
  • Magento now displays the thousand separator for a product’s price price, weight, and custom option price fields.
  • You can now remove products from the shopping cart as expected. Previously, if the number of products being removed exceeded half the quantity of products in stock, Magento would throw an error.
  • You can successfully complete an order for a quantity of product that exceeds half of the product stock.
  • You can now successfully save new order status. Previously, you could not save new order status when selecting Create New Status from the Go to Stores > Order Status menu. (GITHUB-4146)
  • JavaScript validation now works as expected when you add a product to a shopping cart. Previously, if a validation error occurred during this task, Magento would still submit the form.
  • Grid view pagination (as configured from Stores > Configuration > Catalog > Catalog >Storefront) now works as expected. (GITHUB-3861)
  • Magento now correctly displays prices for products with several configurable price options.
  • You can now generate a new simple product without changing the names of already existing products. (GITHUB-4951)
  • The Stock Status attribute now works as expected during creation of configurable products.
  • You can successfully delete an Admin user without breaking integration if the Admin user shares the same ID as an integration user. Previously, if you deleted an Admin user who shared an ID with an integration user, the integration would be permanently broken.
  • Problems related to login when inline translation is enabled have been resolved. (GITHUB-4925)
  • Magento now generates URL rewrites for a new store view as expected during a mass update to a new website.
  • Magento no longer prompts you to select a dropdown attribute when adding a product to the shopping cart if you have already selected an attribute. (GITHUB-4899)
  • You can now drag values as expected when working in the Customizable Options window.
  • Tax Report now displays records as expected.

Known issues

Magento Community Edition 2.1, Release Candidate 3 includes the following known issues:

  • The process of uninstalling modules using command-line tools unexpectedly stalls. Workaround: Ensure that your <magento root>/var/composer_home/auth.json file contains your authentication keys. You can create an auth.json file in one of two ways:

Method 1: If you ran Composer commands from CLI before and specified your repo.magento.com credentials, you can copy the existing auth.json file from your home directory under "~/.composer/"

Method 2: You can manually create the file using this format:

{
    "http-basic": {
        "repo.magento.com": {
            "username": "<public key>",
            "password": "<private key>"
        }
    }
}
  • The Category page displays the former price instead of the current price during scheduled updates.

Technology stack

Our technology stack is built on PHP and MySQL. Magento 2.1 RC3 supports:

  • PHP 5.6
  • PHP 7.0.2
  • PHP 7.0.6 + up until 7.1
  • MySQL 5.6.

We do not support PHP 5.5.x or 7.0.5.

Installation and upgrade instructions

You can install Magento Community Edition 2.1 Release Candidate 3 (RC3) from either Github or by using Composer. This Release Candidate is for test purposes only. Do not install it in a production environment.

Install the Magento software

You can get Magento Open Source (formerly Community Edition) 2.1 from Github, Composer, or using a compressed archive.

See one of the following sections for more information:

Get the Magento Open Source software using Composer

The Open Source software is available from repo.magento.com. Before getting the Open Source software, familiarize yourself with the Composer metapackage prerequisites, then run

composer create-project --repository-url=https://repo.magento.com/ magento/project-community-edition=<version> <installation directory name>

where <version> is 2.1.0, 2.1.1, and so on

For example, to install Magento Open Source 2.1.1 in the magento2 directory:

composer create-project --repository-url=https://repo.magento.com/ magento/project-community-edition=2.1.1 magento2

Get a compressed archive

The following table discusses where to get the Magento software. We provide the following downloads:

  • Magento Open Source software only
  • Magento Open Source software with sample data (designed to help you learn Magento faster)

These packages are easy to get and install. You don’t need to use Composer, all you need to do is to upload a package to your Magento server or hosted platform, unpack it, and run the web-based Setup Wizard.

Archives are available in the following formats: .zip, .tar.bz2, .tar.gz

To get the Magento Open Source software archive:

  1. Go to http://magento.com/download.
  2. Choose either the software or the software and sample data:

    • Magento-CE-<version>.* (without sample data)
    • Magento-CE-<version>+Samples.* (with sample data)

    <version> is the three-digit release number (for example, 2.0.7, 2.1.0, and so on).

Complete the installation

After you get the Open Source software:

  1. Set file system ownership and permissions.
  2. Install the software:

Upgrade from an earlier version

See the following sections for more information.

Upgrade an existing installation from the GitHub repository

Developers who contribute to the Open Source codebase can upgrade manually from the Magento Open Source GitHub repository.

  1. Go to the Contributing Developers page.

  2. Follow the instructions to pull the updates from the repository and update using Composer.

Other upgrades

Other types of upgrades are discussed in Upgrade to Magento version 2.1 (June 22, 2016).

Upgrade an existing installation from the GitHub repository

Developers who contribute to the CE codebase can upgrade manually from the Magento Open Source GitHub repository.

  1. Go to the Contributing Developers page.

  2. Follow the instructions to pull the updates from the repository and update using Composer.

Other upgrades

Other types of upgrades are discussed in Upgrade to Magento version 2.1 (June 22, 2016).

Migration toolkits

The Data Migration Tool helps transfer existing Magento 1.x store data to Magento 2.x. This command-line interface includes verification, progress tracking, logging, and testing functions. For installation instructions, see Install the Data Migration Tool. Consider exploring or contributing to the Magento Data Migration repository.