These release notes are for an old release of Salt. This release might contain known security and other issues that are fixed in the latest release.

# Salt 0.9.6 Release Notes

release:

  2012-01-21

Salt 0.9.6 is a release targeting a few bugs and changes. This is primarily targeting an issue found in the names declaration in the state system. But a few other bugs were also repaired, like missing support for grains in extmods.

Due to a conflict in distribution packaging msgpack will no longer be bundled with Salt, and is required as a dependency.

## New Features

### HTTP and ftp support in files.managed

Now under the source option in the file.managed state a HTTP or ftp address can be used instead of a file located on the salt master.

### Allow Multiple Returners

Now the returner interface can define multiple returners, and will also return data back to the master, making the process less ambiguous.

### Minion Memory Improvements

A number of modules have been taken out of the minion if the underlying systems required by said modules are not present on the minion system. A number of other modules need to be stripped out in this same way which should continue to make the minion more efficient.

### Minions Can Locally Cache Return Data

A new option, cache_jobs, has been added to the minion to allow for all of the historically run jobs to cache on the minion, allowing for looking up historic returns. By default cache_jobs is set to False.

### Pure Python Template Support For file.managed

Templates in the file.managed state can now be defined in a Python script. This script needs to have a run function that returns the string that needs to be in the named file.