Robot Framework 2.8.6 is a new minor release with lots of enhancements and bug fixes. It was released on Tuesday October 7, 2014.
Questions and comments related to the release can be sent to the [robotframework-users](http://groups.google.com/group/robotframework-users) and possible bugs submitted to the [issue tracker](https://github.com/robotframework/robotframework/issues).
If you have pip just run `pip install --update robotframework`. Otherwise see [installation instructions](https://github.com/robotframework/robotframework/blob/master/INSTALL.rst).
Most important enhancements
- Support for more general merging results with Rebot (1687).
- Improved logfiles with collapse all (1478), new icons (1808), and elapsed time on header row (1796).
- Recommendations for not found variables (1804) and keywords (888).
Backwards incompatible changes
- We have removed the old external tools from the distribution. Issue 1754 lists where the tools have moved.
- Support for variables in named arguments and kwarg names (1793) may possibly cause problems in some cases. See the comments [here](https://github.com/robotframework/robotframework/issues/1793#issuecomment-56312988) for details.
- install.py script has been removed (1753).
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to Guy Kisel (guykisel) for contributing these new features:
- BuiltIn.Log pprint support (1666).
- New pattern matching keywords in Collections (1724).
- Keyword/variable not found recommendations (888 and 1804).
Also thanks to everyone else who has contributed with bug reports, feature requests, patches, and fixes.
Full list of fixes and enhancements
| ID | Type | Priority | Summary |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1748 | bug | high | XML: Parsing file with comments fails when using lxml |
| 1759 | bug | high | Variable refering to itself crashes the execution |
| 1687 | enhancement | high | Support more general merging results with Rebot |
| 1768 | enhancement | high | Set up CI |
| 1779 | enhancement | high | Add INSTALL.rst to project root |
| 1741 | bug | medium | Documentation of new `DateTime` library is not included in User Guide package |
| 1764 | bug | medium | DateTime: Default timestamp can contain `.1000` milliseconds while it should only use three digit precision |
| 1784 | bug | medium | XML library: Element in no namespace assigned to parent element namespace |
| 1794 | bug | medium | `Repeat Keyword` does not continue if failure is continuable |
| 1806 | bug | medium | Log: Back button broken when opening test or suite using link |
| 1816 | bug | medium | In plaint text files `|` alone should be considered empty line in pipe-separated format |
| 1478 | enhancement | medium | Log: Support `Collapse All` in addition to `Expand All` |
| 1666 | enhancement | medium | BuiltIn.Log: Use `pprint.pformat` to format the message when `repr=True` |
| 1724 | enhancement | medium | Collections: New keywords for matching list items using glob/regexp patterns optionally case/space sensitively |
| 1735 | enhancement | medium | String: Keywords to convert strings to uppercase and lowercase |
| 1749 | enhancement | medium | XML: New keywords to set/remove text/tag/attribute of several elements in one call |
| 1754 | enhancement | medium | Remove tools distributed with the framework |
| 1789 | enhancement | medium | Better introduction on PyPI |
| 1793 | enhancement | medium | Support variables in named arguments and kwarg names (e.g. `${hello}=world`) |
| 1796 | enhancement | medium | Log: Elapsed time to be visible on suite, test and keyword headers |
| 1799 | enhancement | medium | Remote: Support for timeouts to avoid hanging connections |
| 1802 | enhancement | medium | Doc formatting: New inline style `code` |
| 1804 | enhancement | medium | Variable suggestions when variable matching failed |
| 1807 | enhancement | medium | Support for stopping execution on error (`--ExitOnError`) |
| 1810 | enhancement | medium | Better packaging infrastructure |
| 888 | enhancement | medium | Keyword suggestions when keyword matching failed |
| 1738 | bug | low | Process: Arguments to `Run/Start Process` should be converted to strings when necessary |
| 1739 | bug | low | `BuiltIn.Convert to Hex/Octal` add 'L' suffix when input is bigger than sys.maxint |
| 1767 | bug | low | HTML special characters shown in escaped format in statistic table pop-ups |
| 1771 | bug | low | Using keyword with dot in name using long format (e.g. `MyLib.Keyword.with.dot`) fails |
| 1797 | bug | low | Libdoc outputs don't handle incoming links where spaces are encodes as `+` |
| 1813 | bug | low | Warning about custom keyword overriding standard keyword is not linked to executed keyword |
| 1814 | bug | low | Warning about custom keyword overriding standard keyword contains conflicting library names when importing using WITH NAME syntax |
| 1753 | enhancement | low | Remove non-needed install.py script |
| 1766 | enhancement | low | Rename/convert RF's own acceptance tests from .txt and .html to .robot |
| 1795 | enhancement | low | BuiltIn: Bad error message if keyword evaluating expression (e.g. `Evaluate`, `Should Be True`) is used with an empty string |
| 1808 | enhancement | low | Log: Consistent icons |
Altogether 37 issues. See on [issue tracker](https://github.com/robotframework/robotframework/issues?q=milestone%3A2.8.6).