nutomic

Here is our regular update that explains what we have been working on for the past two weeks. This should allow average users to keep up with development, without reading Github comments or knowing how to program.

@Neshura87 submitted the first ever RFC for Lemmy! It describes how post tags can be implemented.

0.19.0 is getting closer and closer to release, but we are still busy squashing bugs and getting lemmy-ui ready. For now there is another release candidate deployed on voyager.lemmy.ml for testing. Here is the full list of changes since the last release candidate for Lemmy and lemmy-ui

@nutomic fixed a bug with following local communities in the release candidate. He added a first integration test for image uploads.

@dessalines has been busy updating lemmy-ui to account for Lemmy API changes, and squashing various bugs like an issue with timezone db migrations, adding a creator_is_admin field to Post and Comment views.

@SleeplessOne1917 has implemented support for settings import/export in lemmy-ui, as well as some bug fixes.

Support development

@dessalines and @nutomic are working full-time on Lemmy to integrate community contributions, fix bugs, optimize performance and much more. This work is funded exclusively through donations.

If you like using Lemmy, and want to make sure that we will always be available to work full time building it, consider donating to support its development. Recurring donations are ideal because they allow for long-term planning. But also one-time donations of any amount help us.

• Liberapay (preferred option)
• Open Collective
• Patreon
• Cryptocurrency (scroll to bottom of page)

Here is our regular update that explains what we have been working on for the past two weeks. This should allow average users to keep up with development, without reading Github comments or knowing how to program.

We published a new release candidate for Lemmy 0.19.0. Note that this so-called release candidate is really a beta. In the future we will use more appropriate version names.

Most importantly it includes the new feature to export user settings, and later import them on another instance.

The Docker image was changed from Alpine to Debian which should improve stability and performance (#3972). This unfortunately broke ARM builds, so we'd need some assistance getting them working again for debian.

The remaining changes are mostly minor improvements and bug fixes, you can see them in the full changelog. Please test the new version on voyager.lemmy.ml or by installing tag 0.19.0-rc.3 on your server. If you encounter any problems, report them on Github.

For Developers: This version includes various API changes compared to rc.1:

• The endpoints for exporting and importing user settings are at GET /api/v3/user/export_settings and POST /api/v3/user/import_settings. Note that the returned json is not meant to be parsed, but directly stored to disk (#3976).
• /api/v3/login now sets the auth cookie automatically, so clients might not have to handle it anymore. There is also a new endpoint /api/v3/logout which clears the cookie and invalidates the auth token (#3818).
• There is a new endpoint /api/v3/user/validate_auth which returns errors in case of invalid auth token. This is necessary because other API actions silently ignore invalid auth and treat the user as unauthenticated. We are changing various endpoints to return simply {"success": "true"} (#3993, #4058 (not included in rc.2)).
• The endpoint /api/v3/post/mark_as_read can now take an array post_ids instead of single post_id value but remains backwards compatible (#4048).

@nutomic improved the way that titles for Mastodon posts are handled (#4033). He also worked on various minor fixes and enhancements, see here.

@dessalines is nearly done with the redesign of join-lemmy.org. You can see it here, and check the pull request to provide feedback / suggestions. Also worked on cleaning up stale lemmy issues.

@SleeplessOne1917 reworked a much cleaner 2FA interface for lemmy UI (#2179), fixed a bug with the emoji picker (#2175), and added an enable_animated_images setting to users (#4040). Also worked on lemmy-ui-leptos.

Support development

@dessalines and @nutomic are working full-time on Lemmy to integrate community contributions, fix bugs, optimize performance and much more. This work is funded exclusively through donations.

If you like using Lemmy, and want to make sure that we will always be available to work full time building it, consider donating to support its development. Recurring donations are ideal because they allow for long-term planning. But also one-time donations of any amount help us.

• Liberapay (preferred option)
• Open Collective
• Patreon
• Cryptocurrency (scroll to bottom of page)

In my experience the translated subtitles were even better than some human-made ones.

Here is our regular update that explains what we have been working on for the past two weeks. This should allow average users to keep up with development, without reading Github comments or knowing how to program.

We are slowly getting closer to the 0.19 release, although there is still a lot of work left. Client developers should read this post with information about breaking changes to update their projects.

Edit: You can test the latest 0.19 code on voyager.lemmy.ml, or by installing 0.19.0-beta.8 on your server. Be sure to report any bugs on Github.

@nutomic has closed over 100 issues, most of them duplicates, invalid or already resolved ones. He also made numerous pull requests to fix minor bugs and implement small enhancements. This includes a bug fix for federation of admin actions which was released as 0.18.5. He is also changing the way HTML escaping is handled to avoid broken texts.

@dessalines is working on redesigning the join-lemmy.org website, adding the apps and instances pages. Also worked on rewriting the Docker images to use Debian as base instead of Alpine. Additionally he is adding support for new backend features to lemmy-ui (scaled search and cursor-based pagination).

@SleeplessOne1917 has implemented support for new block instance feature, finished implementing the remote follow feature, and updated 2-Factor-Auth to account for a backend rework. He also implemented some bug fixes. He has also been working on adding authentication to lemmy-ui-leptos.

Support development

@dessalines and @nutomic are working full-time on Lemmy to integrate community contributions, fix bugs, optimize performance and much more. This work is funded exclusively through donations.

If you like using Lemmy, and want to make sure that we will always be available to work full time building it, consider donating to support its development. Recurring donations are ideal because they allow for long-term planning. But also one-time donations of any amount help us.

• Liberapay (preferred option)
• Open Collective
• Patreon
• Cryptocurrency (scroll to bottom of page)

Some years ago we used to post weekly development updates to let the community know what we are working on. For some reason we stopped posting these updates, but now we want to continue giving you information every two weeks about the recent development progress. This should allow average users to keep up with development, without reading Github comments or knowing how to program.

We've been working towards a v0.19.0 release of Lemmy, which will include several breaking API changes. Once this is ready, we'll post the these changes in dev spaces, and give app developers several weeks to support the new changes.

This week @nutomic finished implementing the block instance feature for users. It allows users to block entire instances, so that all communities from those instances will be hidden on the frontpage. Posts or comments from users of blocked instances in other communities are unaffected. He also reworked the 2-Factor-Authentication implementation, with a two-step process to enable 2FA which prevents locking yourself out. Additionally he is reworking the API authentication to be more ergonomic by using headers and cookies. Finally he is adding a feature for users to import/export community follows, bocklists and profile settings.

@dessalines is currently implementing a redesign of the join-lemmy.org website. He is also keeping the lemmy-js-client updated with the latest backend changes 1 2 3.

@phiresky optimized the way pagination is implemented. He is also fixing problems with federation workers which are causing test failures and performance problems in the development branch. These problems were introduced during a complex rewrite of the federation queue which was recently finished, and is thought to allow Lemmy federation to scale to the size of Reddit.

@SleeplessOne1917 is implementing remote follow functionality, which makes it easy to follow communities from your home instance while browsing other instances. He is also fixing problems with the way deleted and removed comments are handled .

@codyro and @ticoombs have been making improvements to lemmy-ansible, including externalizing the pict-rs configuration, adding support for AlmaLinux/RHEL, cleaning up the configuration, as well as versioning the deploys. These will make deploying and installing Lemmy much easier.

Support development

@dessalines and @nutomic are working full-time on Lemmy to integrate community contributions, fix bugs, optimize performance and much more. This work is funded exclusively through donations.

If you like using Lemmy, and want to make sure that we will always be available to work full time building it, consider donating to support its development. Recurring donations are ideal because they allow for long-term planning. But also one-time donations of any amount help us.

• Liberapay (preferred option)
• Open Collective
• Patreon
• Cryptocurrency (scroll to bottom of page)

We created a new repository for host requests for comment. It is based on the Rust RFC repo and meant to describe how major new features can be implemented. In this way more people can get involved in the discussion, without having to know Rust or getting lost in implementation details. If there is a major new feature you would like to see implemented, please consider writing an RFC first. Also feel free to suggest changes to the RFC process so that it works better for Lemmy.

One RFC was already created a few weeks ago for supporting post tags. It should be added to the repo soon.

There are already plenty of communities here. New communities can be created on other instances.

The new major version of Lemmy is now ready, and we need your help with testing. Most importantly it uses HTTP for API requests now, which is much more efficient than websocket. Additionally Two-factor-auth is supported. There are also countless other improvements and bug fixes.

You can register on any of the following servers to start testing, no approval required. You can post to your hearts content to find out if anything is broken. The test instances only federate with each other to avoid affecting production instances with spam.

• Enterprise
• Voyager
• DS

If you encounter any bugs that aren't present in 0.17, open an issue and mention in the title that it happened with a release candicate version. Over the next days we will publish new RC versions to fix bugs that will invariably pop up.

Instance admins can try the new version by using Docker images dessalines/lemmy-ui:0.18.0-rc.2 and dessalines/lemmy:0.18.0-rc.1. Make sure that working backups are in place. For production instances its better to wait at least some days for the major issues to be fixed.

We use this for Lemmy.