Synapse 1.34.0 released

Synapse 1.34.0 is now available, and it's loaded with new features and performance improvements.

Note: This release deprecates and replaces the room_invite_state_types configuration option. If you've customized that for your homeserver, please review the Upgrade Notes.

We've also marked the v1 room deletion Admin API as deprecated. Instead of sending a POST to a path ending in /delete, administrators are encourage to instead send an HTTP DELETE to /_synapse/admin/v1/rooms/<room_id>. Thanks to ThibF for implementing this (#9889).

🔗Spaces

The highlight of this release is support for Spaces, now that MSC1772: Matrix Spaces has merged into the Matrix spec!

Synapse also has support for MSC2946: Spaces Summary and MSC3083: Restricting room membership based on space membership, but these are off by default as they're still under development. To enable these experimental MSCs, set experimental_features: { spaces_enabled: true } in your homeserver configuration. These are enabled on the matrix.org homeserver, and we encourage you to experiment with Spaces there and let us know in the Spaces Feedback Room if you encounter any issues.

🔗Memory and Caching

Memory consumption and caching have been a major focus of the Synapse team this quarter, and we've made significant strides:

• Synapse has a new gc_min_interval configuration option with reasonable defaults to prevent Python's garbage collector from running too frequently and thrashing when a large homeserver has its collection thresholds set too low.
• Synapse will report memory allocation stats to Prometheus when using jemalloc.
• Synapse will also measure Redis cache response times and report those to Prometheus.
• For debugging, Synapse can optionally track the memory use of each LruCache.

We have a few more tricks up our sleeves; to learn more about how we're planning to improve the memory cost of joining large rooms, check out last week's Matrix Live.

🔗Other Fixes and Improvements

We've also landed significant improvements to:

• Sending events when Redis is available (#9905, #9950, #9951)
• Joining large rooms when presence is enabled (#9910, #9916)
• Backfilling history in large rooms (#9935)

...and fixed bugs that:

• Prevented cross-account m.room_key_request messages from being delivered (#9961, #9965)
• Incorrectly applied room creation / invitation rate limits to users and app services which should have been exempt (#9968)

The health check on our Docker images now responds more quickly upon successful startup thanks to improvements by maquis196 (#9913), and for especially privacy-conscious homeservers, device names can now be shielded over federation thanks to a contribution by aaronraimist (#9945).

🔗New Access Token Format

Inspired by GitHub's new token format, we've restructured Synapse's access token format to follow the pattern:

syt_<UnpaddedBase64MXIDLocalPart>_<20RandomLetters>_<CRC32>

So a token for @example:matrix.org might look like:

syt_ZXhhbXBsZQ_KfJetOcLWEKCvYdKnQLV_0i3W80

Existing tokens remain valid; this is just for new tokens. We hope the new format reduces network overhead while also making it easier identify misplaced tokens in logs and repositories.

🔗Everything Else

See the Upgrading Instructions and Release Notes for further information on this release.

Synapse is a Free and Open Source Software project, and we'd like to extend our thanks to everyone who contributed to this release, including aaronraimist, maquis196, and ThibF.