Upgrading from an older version
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## Upgrading from an older version

If you already run an older version of refdb and want to upgrade to the latest version, you may have to change a few things in your local setup in order to reuse existing databases and existing configuration files. This section lists all backwards-incompatible changes of the past few versions (the complete list since the days of yore can be found in the file `README`).

### Note

The file `UPGRADING` contains instructions how to avoid losing your data in the case of non-trivial changes in the new version.

### 0.9.8

- The implementation of personal reference lists has changed, most notably in that each user can have more than one of these lists. Although there was no need to alter the database schema, one of the tables is now used to record the ownership of a reference instead of the membership of a reference in a personal list. The results may be a bit unexpected if you upgrade to 0.9.8 without migrating the data.

### 0.9.7

- The main database needs to be re-created if you use MySQL as a database engine.

### 0.9.6

- The database schema of both reference and main databases were changed once more. Please follow the instructions in `UPGRADING` to upgrade both databases.

- This version depends on libdbi-0.8.1 or later, and libdbi-drivers-0.8.1 or later. Please be aware that the names of the driver files have changed after the 0.8.1 release. It is recommended to remove the older drivers in order to avoid surprises.

### 0.9.5

- Once again, the database schema of the main database has changed. However, starting from this version the name of the main database is a configure option. If you do not have to run this and an older version in parallel, you don't have to change the configuration. However, if you want to keep your existing setup while test-driving the new version, there is a new configure switch `--with-main-db` to set the name of the main database.

  In the first case, you'll have to replace your existing main database with the new version. In the second case, you create another main database with a different name. Only the new version of refdb will be able to access this database if configured properly.

  Finally, a bug in the MySQL table definitions was fixed. If you're using MySQL as your database engine, you'll have to migrate your reference databases as well. 0.9.5 provides a SQL script that changes the table definitions appropriately.

- The citation and bibliography style DTD (`citestlylex.dtd`) was extended to facilitate the formatting of bibliographies in terms of indentation and font sizes. Styles written with older versions of the DTD will continue to work with refdb 0.9.5 or later. However, if you want to use the new features, you should extend the style files according to the new DTD and add the styles again.

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