The Ignite Realtime community is happy to announce the release of Spark 3.0.0 version.
We decided to increase major version to 3.x to coincide with a complete UI refresh of Spark which was contributed by Amos . Now Spark uses only FlatLaf Look and Feel. We are very much grateful for his incredible work. Along that Pade Meetings plugin was added by Dele. Spark now uses the latest version of the Smack 4.4 library, thanks Flow. Now Spark works on any Java 8 and more. Improved file transfer compared to Spark 2.9.4 and also updated the HttpFileUpload plugin for file transfer.
Pade Meetings (formerly SparkMeet) plugin is included in this release. You can find it in a chat window, a button with P letter. This plugin works with Openfire Meetings and enables audio and video chat. It was modified by Dele Olajide to use Electron technology. First time a user logs in using this version Spark will download required libraries into user’s profile (it is around 150 MB on Windows, so can take a minute to download). You can also manage all plugins in Spark via Client Control Pluigin and disable them if you want.
Installers:
For Windows has been added 64bit installer and MSI installer, which will be useful for use in a corporate environment.
For MacOS has been replaced the installer because modern versions require a digital signature.
The release also contains bug fixes and many improvements.
Full list of changes can be found in the changelog .
We encourage users and developers to get involved with Spark project by providing feedback in the forums or submitting pull requests on our GitHub page.
You can download Spark from the Downloads page. Below are the sha256 checksums:
I had some issues with the install. I used the 64 bit offline msi, but it failed to upgrade my existing install. It looked like it worked, but the spark.exe file would not launch the program. Also, it does appear to be installing the 64 bit version into the C:\Program Files (x86) folder, even though it’s 64 bit.
32 and 64 bit are correctly installed.
It’s just that the MSI installer doesn’t know how to remove EXE. If you don’t have much need MSI just use EXE installer, it’s great to remove previous installations.
I was under the impression that 64-bit programs should install under C:\Program Files. Can you explain why this is correct, if it’s not installing a 64-bit program in this location? I’d prefer to use the msi is possible.
Msi detected your current installation and tried to overwrite it at its current location. This is why it was in (x86) folder. If you do clean install of msi, it will install into 64-bit Program files.
Speaking of 64 bit. When i tried 64-bit msi i noticed that i need external Java. So i took 8 or 11 from Adoptium. And installer then located it and installed. Also was able to open Spark. But when logging in to igniterealtime.org server it was giving SSL errors, so i just went back to 32-bit with jre included
I am not a dev, but i think team wants to stop bundling java completely in all products. I think leaving it in 32bit 3.0.0 was for a transition period. And also binaries and build config is already there, so it was easy to produce. Btw, jre binaries included are very old, more than 3 years (8.0.202). That’s one the reasons. Oracle changed licensing, so bundling newer versions is impossible. Adjusting build process for some OpenJDK flavor and keeping it up to date is cumbersome and costs time. So, eventually installers with jre will be phased out. Or i should say 32bit installers altogether probably.
Thank you for getting this release out. Great to see that this project is still alive. We have been using Spark and Openfire for years now.
Any chance of adding the Dark version of FlatLaf in the future?
