Hi folks,

Whilst the blog has been a bit quiet, we've actually had an incredibly busy summer refining Synapse, building the new matrix-react-sdk and example apps, building an entirely new matrix-appservice-bridge framework for rapidly creating Matrix<->other-protocol bridges, getting end-to-end encryption ready for primetime and lots more fun stuff as we keep chipping away to take Matrix out of beta. We'll write about all of these once they're ready, but right now the big news is that after 6 release candidates we have a major new update for Synapse out today - version 0.10.0. This also includes 0.9.4, which we never quite got around to releasing and ended up skipping from 0.9.4-rc1 straight to 0.10.0-rc1.

The release focuses mainly on performance, bugfixes, and infrastructure work to support forthcoming features like end-to-end encryption, read receipts, etc. Some of the more exciting new features include preset ACLs for room creation; history visibility ACLs; SAML2 single-sign-on login (courtesy of Ericsson, thanks guys!), filename support when sending files, support for specifying a canonical alias for a room, support for intermediary SSL certificates, etc.

The full changelog is below.

To upgrade, go read https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/blob/master/UPGRADE.rst - to install for the first time, go to https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/blob/master/README.rst.

Hi all,

We seem to have done that thing again where we were too busy writing new stuff (E2E crypto, all-new React-based Web SDK, long-awaited iOS Console update) to remember that we'd released a new version of Synapse - sorry!

Synapse 0.9.3 was released on July 1st (actually on June 23rd as 0.9.3-rc1, but was released without changes). It's a fairly minor release but does provide some performance improvements and bug fixes - see below for details. Get it from http://github.com/matrix-org/synapse if you haven't already.

We've been running an IRC gateway from Matrix to Freenode almost since day 1 - originally it was a simple perl bot written by tm604 using Net::Async::Matrix; later it was rewritten by LeoNerd to be a bit more modular, and nowadays it's a full IRC/Matrix Application Service written in Node.js by Kegan.

Up until the end of last week the bridge was limited to synchronising a fixed number of channels between Freenode and Matrix (#matrix, #matrix-dev, #openwebrtc, #vuc and #hypothes.is, to be precise), as well as any PMs. But as of Friday, with huge thanks to the admins over at Freenode, we can now bridge any channel in Freenode through to Matrix.

Doing this is trivial - you just /join #freenode_#channelname:matrix.org from a typical Matrix client - e.g. /join #freenode_#Node.js:matrix.org will give you access to all of #Node.js via Matrix, effectively using Matrix as a great big distributed IRC bouncer in the sky ;)

There are a few limitations in the current setup:

• We only incrementally synchronise the membership lists when folks speak in either IRC or Matrix. This is to avoid flooding either IRC or Matrix with lurkers when the bridge initially joins a channel. We have some plans to improve this in future - see BOTS-53 for some of the sordid details.
• We don't synchronise joins/parts currently to avoid flooding Matrix with lots of IRC join/part spam. Again, this will improve in future.
• You can't join +k channels.
• Kicks/bans/invites and other ACLs currently don't propagate between IRC & Matrix. (I.e. a Matrix user can be kicked from IRC, but it'll continue to sit in Matrix unless also kicked for there). +i chanmode supported however.
• Bridged public IRC rooms are not yet advertised in the public room list on matrix.org.
• It should be possible to change the nickname of your IRC user by messaging !nick irc.freenode.net MrFlibble to @appservice-irc:matrix.org. (This isn't actually turned on right now, but should be fixed shortly. See https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-irc/blob/master/HOWTO.md#changing-nicks for details.

We'll keep chipping away at making the IRC<->Matrix mapping perfect, but in its current state it's still really usable. It's obviously beta still, but please give it a go and let us know in #matrix:matrix.org how you get on with it!

Hi all,

If things seem a bit quiet here at the moment it's because most of the Matrix team is in the 'build' phase across the board on a bunch of major new projects - including the long-awaited reusable UI component library for the Web, end-to-end encryption support, stable VoIP on mobile and a few other surprises. The first wave of all this new work landed today in the form of a new major version release (0.1.0) of matrix-js-sdk: our javascript SDK library.

The history of JS client support on Matrix is that in the original rush to get a PoC webclient out the door back in September, we jumped straight to talking to the Matrix HTTP API from Angular controllers in 'syweb'. This then got split into an Angular SDK (matrix-angular-sdk) containing a bunch of services for handling the Matrix client state with the actual webapp sitting alongside as an example of the SDK. This then in turn got split into a basic matrix-js-sdk (wrapping the Matrix client-server HTTP API) and matrix-angular-sdk (handling the clientside state and exposing it as Angular services) - and this is how the current demo Angular webapp works at http://matrix.org/beta.

However, this poses a major problem if you want a richer client SDK but don't want to use Angular - e.g. if you prefer another framework (or no framework at all), or are using the SDK in an Application Service or similar. So, this has prompted a major upgrade to the matrix-js-sdk in order to extend it to act both as a simple wrapper of the Matrix Client-Server HTTP API, but also expose a full object and event model to describe the state of a Matrix client together with all the higher level functions to drive it. To quote from the README:

This SDK provides a full object model around the Matrix Client-Server API and emits events for incoming data and state changes. Aside from wrapping the HTTP API, it:

• Handles syncing (via /initialSync and /events)
• Handles the generation of "friendly" room and member names.
• Handles historical RoomMember information (e.g. display names).
• Manages room member state across multiple events (e.g. it handles typing, power levels and membership changes).
• Exposes high-level objects like Rooms, RoomState, RoomMembers and Users which can be listened to for things like name changes, new messages, membership changes, presence changes, and more.

Later versions of the SDK will:

• Automatically retry requests to send messages due to network errors.
• Automatically retry requests to send messages due to rate limiting errors.
• Mark events' sent status (e.g. 'not sent').
• Handle "local echo" of messages sent.
• Handle queueing of messages.
• Handle pagination.
• Expose a RoomSummary which would be suitable for a recents page.
• Provide different pluggable storage layers (e.g. local storage, database-backed)

It also is designed to provide an API that abstracts both version 1 of the client-server API and the upcoming version 2 (which fixes various thinkos we've discovered along the way in v1).

This is incredibly exciting stuff as it now gives a really robust yet lightweight API for client-side and application-service development in JavaScript. Predictably enough we're using it to develop our new reusable web UI components, and I suspect we'll see new Node-based application services making use of in the near future. Meanwhile, it's more than topical as it should run straight on top of the Tessel JavaScript hardware modules we're giving away this weekend as our prize for the best hack built on Matrix at TADHack - letting the little Tessel ARM system-on-a-chip speak a very rich and native Matrix dialect!

The new matrix-js-sdk comes with comprehensive jsdoc detailing the new API which you can find at http://matrix-org.github.io/matrix-js-sdk/global.html. There are also some basic examples available, including a new simple node-powered command-line client designed for testing the SDK. Finally, if you're interested in reading the design process by which we've converged on the current API, all the details may be found in JIRA on SYJS-5.

So: if you've been itching to get your hands on a much more powerful pure-JS Matrix SDK, now's your chance! It's very early days for the new API so we expect to see a few incompatible changes on the horizon, but we encourage you to have a play and tell us what you think!.

To find out more, go check out the project at http://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-js-sdk, or if you're feeling daring just grab the library with npm install matrix-js-sdk and get hacking!

In the excitement of KamailioWorld last week we completely forgot to mention that we released Synapse 0.9.1.

This is a pretty important performance and stability update of all the new stuff that landed in 0.9.0, as well as landing a major new feature in the form of 'backfill': we finally have the ability to correctly sync in historical conversation history over federation for newly federated rooms. In other words, if you join a remote room you should be able to navigate its history as intended.

We highly recommend upgrading to 0.9.1 for all the performance improvements and backfill support - get it now from http://github.com/matrix-org/synapse.

Amandine and I just got back from WebRTC World 2015 in Miami - the conference was a great success: a fantastic opportunity to meet up with many of the companies who are supporting Matrix and give everyone an update on what Matrix is up to with our Keynote: Defragmenting the Internet for fun and non-profit!.

We also had a little too much fun in the demo shoot-out - hooking up a Parrot Bebop quadrocopter into Matrix using a Matrix-enabled Janus WebRTC Gateway. The problem here is that the Parrot firmware and C SDK provides H.264 video, but doesn't package it up at all for use with WebRTC - let alone using interoperable signalling like Matrix. So this is a classic use of Matrix to expose a simple open consistent interface to a system which is otherwise is stuck with a proprietary non-web-friendly API. The code hasn't been tidied up yet, but our hacked Matrixified fork of Janus is up at https://github.com/matrix-org/janus-gateway/tree/ardrone3 if anyone has a drone and is crazy enough to want to experiment with it :)

Meanwhile, we also showed OpenWebRTC-powered VoIP on the latest develop iOS Matrix Console app talking hardware-accelerated H.264 through to Firefox on the desktop. My ancient 2010 MacBook Pro did its best to sabotage the demo (turns out that 1080P AirPlay + Firefox WebRTC is a bridge too far), but it gave a good idea of what's to come. Many thanks to the OpenWebRTC team for lots of help in getting the demo together in time!

It turns out that all the demo excitement was worth it in the end, as the jury seemed to like what Matrix is up to and was kind enough to award us more points than any of the other 13 demos... meaning that we won Best In Show!!. Huge thanks to the judges for believing in the Matrix vision, and congratulations to all the other demoists too :)

Meanwhile, the slides from the demo presentation can be found here: Building bridges between islands of communication, and you can see the full video of our Demo here:

...and the actual video stream that the drone transmitted before I crashed it (recorded on Janus) is at...

Finally, our grand finale was meant to be combining the two demos, and showing OpenWebRTC decoding the H.264 from the Drone in hardware on an iPhone - using Matrix of course to set up the call and control the drone. Alas a TURN-related bug got in the way of this working, but we just fixed it up in the office this morning, and I'm proud to show the first ever Parrot Bebop -> Janus -> Matrix -> OpenWebRTC video stream!! (and very exciting it is too...)

Huge thanks again to Dave for doing the Matrix integration with Janus, Stefan and Rob from OpenWebRTC for all the help on the OWR side, and Manu & Giom for porting the OpenWebRTC pull request to MatrixKit and landing it in iOS Console Develop for the demo!

As a follow-on to the previous post, Apple approved version 0.4.0 of the iOS Matrix Console app over the weekend - grab it now from the app store!. Whilst cosmetically it looks almost identical to 0.3.x, the architecture is completely different given the app is now built using MatrixKit - and stability has improved considerably as a result. Please install and let us know how you get on!

🔗Note: This blog post is outdated, and an up-to-date tutorial is located on the synapse project repo

Synapse has had support for exporting a comprehensive range of metrics via HTTP since 0.8.1 - we added this to help quantify the benefits of all the performance work which is going on currently in advance of Synapse 0.9. If you're interested in monitoring your own synapse and seeing what's going on using something like Prometheus, Leo just wrote a quick tutorial on getting up and running:

🔗How to monitor Synapse metrics using Prometheus

1: Install prometheus:

Follow instructions at http://prometheus.io/docs/introduction/install/

2: Enable synapse metrics:

Simply setting a (local) port number will enable it. Pick a port. prometheus itself defaults to 9090, so starting just above that for locally monitored services seems reasonable. E.g. 9092:

Add to homeserver.yaml

metrics_port: 9092

Restart synapse

3: Check out synapse-prometheus-config

https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse-prometheus-config

4: Add synapse.html and synapse.rules

The .html file needs to appear in prometheus's consoles directory, and the .rules file needs to be invoked somewhere in the main config file. A symlink to each from the git checkout into the prometheus directory might be easiest to ensure git pull keeps it updated.

5: Add a prometheus target for synapse

This is easiest if prometheus runs on the same machine as synapse, as it can then just use localhost:

global: {'{'}
  rule_file: "synapse.rules"
{'}'}
job: {'{'}
name: "synapse"
target_group: {'{'}
target: "http://localhost:9092/"
{'}'}
{'}'}

6: Start prometheus:

./prometheus -config.file=prometheus.conf

7: Wait a few seconds for it to start and perform the first scrape,

then visit the console:

http://server-where-prometheus-runs:9090/consoles/synapse.html

And the end result looks something like...

...amongst many many other system & application metrics.

You can grab the latest version of the tutorial at https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/blob/master/docs/metrics-howto.md - thanks to Leo for writing it up. Any questions, let us know!

As of 9am tomorrow, somewhere in the depths of East London (and remotely from around the world), a diaspora of elite VoIP/WebRTC/Telco developers will compete to build the most innovative and impressive communications demos at Tadhack Mini London! Dave, Oddvar and myself are going to be there from the core Matrix.org team, both on-site and online (at #matrix:matrix.org, of course) to provide support - especially to everyone who's using Matrix APIs in their solution. And as we mentioned before, we'll even be giving away two Parrot Bebop Drones to the best hacks built using Matrix!

It's not too late to get involved - the more the merrier. We reckon it's going to be a really fun weekend, so look forward to chatting to some of you soon!

Quick heads up that Matrix.org is going to be at Enterprise Connect next week in Orlando. If you're attending and interested in open federation between WebRTC solutions, Enterprise UC, messaging/voip apps, the PSTN etc - then needless to say we'd love to talk to you! Please come seek us out, or drop us an email (firstname at matrix.org) or find us on #matrix:matrix.org to schedule a chat in person.