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.

  • fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.comEnglish
    16·
    1 year ago

    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.

    Thank you for the update and the heads up.

    How will this be announced, and what specifically does several weeks mean? Since Lemmy goes beyond Mobile Apps to all kinds of systems including moderation tools, auto-purgers, bots, CSAM, auto-subscribers, searchers, etc, breaking changes to the API can have far-reaching impacts.

    Could something be set up specifically for breaking-change announcements where participants could be alerted? Even just a Breaking Changes issue that could be followed would work nicely.

    Thank you again.

    • nutomic@lemmy.mlOPMEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      When we are ready to publish the first release candidate, we will make a post that lists all the breaking changes. You can follow !announcements@lemmy.ml via rss reader to get notified about it. We will also share it in different Matrix chats, and I’m sure it will get upvoted to the frontpage as well.