Flarum 2.0.0-rc.2 released

IanM

Flarum `2.0.0-rc.2` Released 🎉

Six weeks ago we shipped 2.0.0-rc.1 and asked you to do one thing: run it on real forums and tell us what breaks. You did — and 2.0.0-rc.2 is the result. 41 merged PRs, almost all of them fixes traced directly back to reports from people running rc.1 in production, on staging, and on the nightly demo.

✅ Still production-safe for early adopters, and the upgrade from rc.1 is a plain composer update. Back up your database, test on staging if you can, keep a rollback plan — the usual.

👀 This forum is already on it. discuss.flarum.org has been updated to rc.2.

🧪 Want to try before upgrading? The nightly demo at nightly.flarum.site is rebuilt daily from the latest 2.x code.

🧭 Where we are

Nothing about the release-candidate promise from rc.1 has changed:

The API is still frozen. An extension built against rc.1 works unchanged on rc.2 and will work on 2.0.0 final.
The upgrade path stays clean. rc.1 → rc.2 → 2.0.0 is composer update the whole way.
Regressions go to the top of the pile. That's exactly what this release is made of.

rc.2 is a maintenance and hardening release — no new surface area to speak of, just a lot of real-world rough edges sanded down. If rc.1 was "we made it to RC", rc.2 is "you found the bugs, we fixed them." Please keep them coming.

Where to report:

Bugs in core — flarum/frameworkissues
General feedback, questions, extension behaviour —Support
Security issues — security@flarum.org (please don't post publicly)

🛠️ What changed in rc.2

🔔 Notifications & email

The biggest cluster this cycle. Several people reported duplicate notifications and emails under load — all now fixed:

Notification and email duplicates from a queue race in NotificationSyncer are eliminated.
The notification dedup query never matched non-null data on MySQL, which is what let duplicates through in the first place.
Transactional emails now send in the recipient's preferred locale rather than the sender's or the forum default.
The email logo now resolves via the flarum-assets disk, so it renders correctly regardless of storage configuration.
The SMTP ping threshold dropped to 20s to survive idle-disconnects from relays that hang up aggressively.

📡 Realtime on iOS Safari

@ekumanov did a deep dive on WebSocket behaviour when iOS Safari backgrounds a tab, and landed a series of fixes:

Reconnect and catch up on missed events after the tab returns from the background.
Reconstruct Pusher on reconnect to get around iOS's lives:2 connection budget.
Only force-reconnect on visibilitychange on iOS, leaving other platforms alone.
Plus correct boolean-setting casting and ordering realtime:info users by joined_at.

🗂️ Queue & jobs

Per-class queue routing on AbstractJob is restored — jobs can again declare their own queue.
QueueFactory::getPausedQueues() keeps Flarum compatible with illuminate/queue v13.11+.
Orphaned queued jobs no longer spam duplicate ModelNotFoundException logs, and EloquentBuffer now guards against orphaned/mock models.

🔍 Search

PostgreSQL search configuration handling is hardened.
Extend\SearchDriver class-string types widened to SearcherInterface so custom drivers type-check cleanly.
The search clear button no longer opens the modal when clicked, and is hidden when collapsed in tablet mode.

📱 Frontend & mobile polish

Mobile discussion total post count now updates when you reply — the scrubber header was rendering a reused vnode that went stale (#4602).
User badges sit correctly next to the username instead of drifting left of the avatar.
Native tooltip flash, async teardown leaks, and dynamic tooltip text are all resolved.
Flash of unstyled content is gone — the async-CSS dual path was replaced with a render-blocking stylesheet.
text-overflow: ellipsis restored on long button labels, and the admin extension danger badge stays visible on long names.
TextEditor.onbuild no longer races against an async Mithril redraw.
Browsers without XSLT support boot again thanks to a bundled polyfill.

🔒 Privacy & correctness

GDPR export downloads are hardened with an audit trail, single-use links, and an active expiry check.
The UserResource groups relationship is scoped to viewable groups, so hidden group membership doesn't leak.
UserSecurityPage no longer crashes when the user model loads asynchronously.
Discussion PATCH responses surface event posts, and title changes route through rename().
The profile author filter uses the user slug, not the username.

🏷️ Extensions

(tags) the subquery for permitted tag IDs is restored (a regression from #4502), and legacy unused background columns are dropped from the tags table.
(flags) the literal 'undefined' is gone from the Inappropriate reason, and FlagPostModal is lazy-loaded.
(nicknames) min/max length settings are cast to int before reaching Schema\Str.

⚡ Performance

JsDirectoryCompiler skips MIME detection when the file extension already tells it what it needs to know.

💙 Thank you

rc.2 exists because people ran rc.1 and reported what they found. Special thanks to @ClaudiusH, who continues to run the nightly builds and surface bugs big and small — including the mobile post-count regression fixed here.

Contributors this cycle:

@ekumanov — realtime iOS Safari reconnection work #4590, #4654, #4662
@huoxin233 — search clear button #4594 #4595, tooltip fixes #4674
@luceos — badge misalignment fix #4582
@datlechin — UserSecurityPage async-load crash #4651
@forumaker — illuminate/queue v13.11+ compatibility #4673
@Abdooo2235 — drop legacy tags columns #4529
@IanM — everything else

🚀 Try it / upgrade

Live demo — nightly.flarum.site, rebuilt daily
Right here — discuss.flarum.org is running rc.2
Update your install — composer update -W, then php flarum migrate, php flarum cache:clear, and php flarum assets:publish (back up first, and test on staging if you can)

📋 Changelog

Added

(core) per-class queue routing on AbstractJob by @IanM #4656
(core) QueueFactory::getPausedQueues() for illuminate/queue v13.11+ compatibility by @forumaker #4673

Fixed

(core) add XSLT polyfill so the forum still boots on browsers without XSLT support by @IanM #4359
(core) misaligned user badges in posts — positioned relative to the username instead of the avatar by @luceos #4582
(core) hide the search clear button when collapsed in tablet mode by @huoxin233 #4594
(core) prevent the search modal from opening when the clear button is clicked by @huoxin233 #4595
(core) prevent discussion list cache wipe on back-navigation to tag pages by @IanM #4598
(core) send transactional emails in the recipient's preferred locale by @IanM #4627
(core) restore text-overflow: ellipsis on long button labels by @IanM #4628
(core) scope the UserResource groups relationship to viewable groups by @IanM #4629
(core) add missing getHidden() to the Log\Context\Repository stub by @IanM #4633
(core) avoid duplicate ModelNotFoundException logs on orphaned queued jobs by @IanM #4634
(core) resolve VersionerInterface from the container and cache rev-manifest reads by @IanM #4638
(core) track avatar HiDPI variants on users to remove srcsetFor() filesystem calls by @IanM #4639
(core) resolve the email logo URL via the flarum-assets disk by @IanM #4640
(core) lower the SMTP ping threshold to 20s to survive idle-disconnect from relays by @IanM #4641
(core) notification dedup query never matching non-null data on MySQL by @IanM #4645
(core) notification and email duplicates from a queue race in NotificationSyncer by @IanM #4647
(core) TypeError in the Revised event when post content is NULL by @IanM #4648
(core) prevent UserSecurityPage crash when the user loads asynchronously by @datlechin #4651
(core) send the user slug, not username, for the profile author filter by @IanM #4655
(core) TextEditor.onbuild race against async Mithril redraw by @IanM #4657
(core) surface event posts in discussion PATCH responses and route title changes via rename() by @IanM #4658
(core) harden pgsql search configuration handling by @IanM #4663
(core) replace the async-CSS dual path with a render-blocking stylesheet to fix FOUC by @IanM #4664
(core) widen Extend\SearchDriver class-string types to SearcherInterface by @IanM #4668
(core) guard EloquentBuffer against orphaned/mock models by @IanM #4669
(core) resolve native tooltip flash, async teardown leaks, and dynamic tooltip text by @huoxin233 #4674
(core) mobile discussion total post count not updating on reply by @IanM #4678
(admin) keep the extension danger badge visible on long names by @IanM #4660
(realtime) reconnect the WebSocket and catch up on missed events after iOS Safari backgrounding by @ekumanov #4590
(realtime) cast boolean setting correctly by @IanM #4624
(realtime) order users by joined_at in realtime:info by @IanM #4630
(realtime) reconstruct Pusher on iOS reconnect to bypass the lives:2 budget by @ekumanov #4654
(realtime) only force-reconnect on iOS visibilitychange by @IanM #4662
(gdpr) harden export download with an audit trail, single-use links, and an active expiry check by @IanM #4642
(tags) restore subquery for permitted tag IDs (regression from #4502) by @IanM #4649
(flags) drop literal 'undefined' from the Inappropriate reason and lazy-load FlagPostModal by @IanM #4659
(nicknames) cast min/max length settings to int before passing to Schema\Str by @IanM #4599

Changed

(tags) drop legacy unused background columns from the tags table by @Abdooo2235 #4529

Performance

(core) skip MIME detection in JsDirectoryCompiler when the file extension already matches by @IanM #4632

Capybara

This release was the first time I contributed something that actually made it into the core.

I still remember how nervous I was right before hitting the button to submit the PR 😄

jordanjay29

Fantastic news and great progress for Flarum.

Capybara good job on your first big contribution, feel proud!

CeeBee

Congrats on another big milestone! I'm not sure if this is related to RC2 or the FoF Reactions extension (I'm on the latest beta 7 release), but when I "react" to a post I get this error:

Database query failed. This may be caused by an incompatibility between an extension and your database driver.

But when I refresh the page, I can see that it did leave the reaction successfully.

EDIT: I see @Wlork already reported the issue: https://discuss.flarum.org/d/20655-friendsofflarum-reactions/344

CyberGene

IanM Contributors this cycle:

@ekumanov — realtime iOS Safari reconnection work #4590, #4654, #4662

Glad to be of help 🙂 It was me who discovered the issues and the exact reproduction scenarios, however the unsung hero is Claude Code that helped troubleshoot and find the exact cause and it wasn't easy. I spent close to an hour with it, ultimately connecting my iPhone with a cable to the computer, so that I can collect some instrumented Safari browser logs and still had to make more than 10 such iterations until the exact cause was clear. I can imagine that a real human would probably do the same but it would take much more time.

Kudos for the RC2! Already running it on my prod forum, after weeks of running RC1 🙂

navindra

Congratulations @IanM on the new release and thank you to all the contributors!

📦 Flarum-In-A-Box has been updated to Flarum 2.0.0-rc.2 with new extensions such as the eye-popping FriendsOfFlarum PhotoSwipe.

mafesa

Congratulations on all the work you're doing!

Sorry, just a quick question... but I'm curious.

Has Discuss already been updated to RC2?

I'm asking because the discussions seem a bit "sluggish"—opening them takes a few seconds.
I'm reporting it because I'm not sure whether it's just an issue on my end.
Out of curiosity, I ran a quick test.

The same thing happens on https://nightly.flarum.site as well.

KBExit

mafesa discuss has been on rc2 for a good minute.

Wlork

I successfully migrated my test forum to RC2 🙂

I'd like to migrate my current forum to version 2.0, but as you know, I'm waiting for an extension to become compatible.

Thank you to all for your work and congrate for new milestone !

自在の偶

nice work, can't wait to see final version

Eddie

Thank you for all the hard works.

Can someone explain how to do a fresh install for V2 RC2 please 😊
Should I do
composer create-project flarum/flarum:^2.0.0 --stability=rc . ?

ernestdefoe

Eddie It would be under the beta tag still.

Eddie

ernestdefoe
Thanks for the reply
so composer create-project flarum/flarum:^2.0.0 --stability=beta . right?
and I get rc2? asking because on packagist shows v2.0.0-rc.2

ernestdefoe

Eddie That's correct well it should install RC2.

TOWUK

Eddie use composer create-project flarum/flarum --stability=beta .

ernestdefoe

TOWUK the command they posted above is directly from the Flarum 2.x installation docs.

TOWUK

ernestdefoe 😁
It's funny, but the documentation for version 2 is outdated.

ernestdefoe

Well if that's true then I apologize just going by what the docs say.