Re: Documentation Feature Compare Releases

Alan DeKok via Freeradius-Users <[email protected]> Mon, 6 Apr 2026 09:59:52 -0400

Newsgroups	gmane.comp.freeradius.user
Message-ID	<[email protected]>

On Apr 6, 2026, at 6:30 AM, Douglas Fischer <[email protected]> wrote:
> How difficult would it be to add some resource that could allow comparing
> the documentation of two releases of freeRADIUS?

  To a large extent that's what "git" is for.  Alternately, you could just open two browser windows.  The online documentation has a version selection in the bottom left.  Just pick two versions, and swap back and forth between them.

> This is just a suggestion to perhaps try to smooth the learning curve for
> those who don't have extensive experience with AAA or with freeRADIUS
> specifically.

  What specifically are you looking for from the comparison?

  For v3, there isn't really a lot of changes from version to version.  It's a stable release, so we don't introduce incompatible changes.

  There are new features added, but they are generally minor, and are largely tweaks for corner cases.

  For v4, it's not released (I know...).  Essentially everything has changed from v3, so there isn't a lot of point in comparing features.

> I'm not sure (I'm not a programmer), but I believe Sphinx has some plugin
> that allows this comparison of release documentation.

  The documentation system uses Antora, which doesn't have that feature.  We've tried using Sphinx, and it just didn't work for us.

> I'm making this suggestion because I believe this possibility would be
> particularly useful at transition points between major releases, or when
> adding more impactful features.

  The v4 documentation has an "upgrade" section which lists all of the changes from v3 to v4.  It also has explanations as to how to upgrade.

  For now, if you're not familiar with AAA or RADIUS, you should stick with v3.

  Alan DeKok.

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