aleph

.. epigraph::

Truth cannot penetrate a closed mind. If all places in the universe are in the Aleph, then all stars, all lamps, all sources of light are in it, too.

-- The Aleph <http://www.phinnweb.org/links/literature/borges/aleph.html>_, Jorge Luis Borges

⚠️ PROJECT STATUS: SUNSETTING ⚠️ Our involvement with this open-source project is being sunsetted. Maintenance of this version will officially end after December 2025.

Why?

This decision marks a significant strategic shift for us. Over the past year, our team has completely rewritten the Aleph codebase from scratch to launch Aleph Pro. As we transition to this new supported platform, we are focusing our resources entirely on Aleph Pro to ensure we can keep the lights on for investigations around the world.

For further details on this decision and what it means for the future, please read our official FAQs <https://www.occrp.org/en/announcement/aleph-pro-frequently-asked-questions-on-the-future-of-occrps-investigative-data-platform/>__ .

Timeline & Support

• We will continue to provide maintenance for this repository until December 31st, 2025. After this date, no further updates, bug fixes, or support will be provided by the core team.
• For any questions regarding the transition or the legacy software, please reach out via our Discourse community <https://aleph.discourse.group//>__.
• For those currently hosting their own Aleph instances, we will be in touch with you very soon regarding the transition.
• Organizations and individuals looking to collaborate can reach out to [email protected].

Thank you! We are incredibly proud of what we’ve built so far. Thank you to all the contributors and community members who helped build this project and believed in our mission.

About the software

Aleph is a tool for indexing large amounts of both documents (PDF, Word, HTML) and structured (CSV, XLS, SQL) data for easy browsing and search. It is built with investigative reporting as a primary use case. Aleph allows cross-referencing mentions of well-known entities (such as people and companies) against watchlists, e.g. from prior research or public datasets.

For further details on the software, how to use it, install it or manage data imports, please check the documentation at:

• https://docs.aleph.occrp.org
• Installation: https://docs.aleph.occrp.org/developers/installation

Support

Aleph is used and developed by multiple organisations and interested individuals. If you're interested in participating in this process, please read the support policy (SUPPORT.md), the contribution rules (CONTRIBUTING.md), and the code of conduct (CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md) and then get in touch:

• https://docs.aleph.occrp.org/get-in-touch

Aleph Development

If you're looking to get involved with the development of Aleph, please check the CONTRIBUTING.md file for details on how to get started.

⚠️ IMPORTANT ⚠️ The default branch in this GitHub repository is "develop". The develop branch contains unreleased, unstable code. For stable releases, please check out the list of releases <https://github.com/alephdata/aleph/releases>_ or switch to the main branch <https://github.com/alephdata/aleph/tree/main>_.

Release process

If you are interested in, or have been tasked with releasing a new version of Aleph. The following steps should be followed:

Overview

The basic process for releasing Aleph is this:

1. Check internal libraries for updates and merge. Release our libraries in the following order
2. servicelayer
3. followthemoney
4. ingest-file
5. react-ftm
6. Ensure that all libraries for a release are up to date in aleph and merged to the develop branch.
7. Ensure that any features, bugfixes are merged into develop and that all builds are passing
8. Ensure that the CHANGELOG.md file is up to date on the develop branch. Add information as required.
9. Create a RC release of Aleph.
10. Test and verify the RC. Perform further RC releases as required.
11. Merge all changes to main
12. Create a final version of Aleph

As far as possible apply the rules of semantic versioning when determining the type of release to perform.

Technical process

RC releases

If you need to perform an RC release of Aleph, follow these steps:

1. Ensure that the `CHANGELOG`` is up to date on the develop branch and that all outstanding PR's have been merged
2. From the develop branch run bump2version (major, minor, patch) this will create a x.x.x-rc1 version of aleph
3. push the tags to the remote with git push --tags
4. push the version bump with git push
5. If there are problems with the RC you can fix them and use bump2version build to generate new rc release

Major, minor, patch releases

1. switch to main and pull from remote
2. If not already done merge develop into main
3. Update translations using make translate
4. If you get npm errors, go into the ui folder and run npm install
5. commit translations to main and push to remote
6. run bump2version --verbose --sign-tags release. Note that bump2version won't show changes when you make the change, but it will work (see git log to check)
7. push the tags to the remote with git push --tags
8. push version bump to remote with git push
9. merge main back into develop. Slightly unrelated to the release process but this is a good time to do it so that the new version numbers appear in as well