Synapse 1.59 released

Synapse 1.59 is out! Let's see what's new in this version.

Generic worker types

When Synapse instances are subject to high load, it can be useful to use workers to balance the load more effectively. Workers are separate processes that can take some of the load off the main Synapse process, and allow the homeserver to scale more effectively.

In the past, Synapse only provided a specific set of types of workers, each capable of handling a specific set of operations. For some time now we have been working on allowing more flexibility around worker configuration, which started all the way back in Synapse 1.12.0 with the introduction of a generic worker application type.

Synapse 1.59 furthers this work by deprecating the synapse.app.appservice and synapse.app.user_dir worker application types. Homeserver administrators should change the configuration of instances using these types to the generic synapse.app.generic_worker application type, and use the notify_appservices_from_worker and update_user_directory_from_worker to delegate application service and user directory work (respectively) to a worker.

See the upgrade notes for more information on this change.

Push rules

Push rules allow Matrix clients to define notification rules on a homeserver. One often reported issue with notification in Matrix is the fact that notifications are sent out when server ACLs, which define which server(s) can and cannot interact in a room, change. This is especially annoying during big waves of abuse, as there might be multiple servers that need to be banned from rooms, thus causing a lot of unneeded notifications.

Synapse 1.59 now supports silencing server ACL updates, by implementing the new push rule documented in MSC3786. However, since this MSC hasn't been incorporated into the spec yet, this behaviour is disabled by default in Synapse: see the implementation pull request for more information on turning it on.

Synapse 1.59 also allows third-party modules to validate and change the actions associated with an existing push rule via the Module API. This is helpful for modules wishing to, for example, configuring specific notification settings when new users register.

Everything else

As of Synapse 1.59, Synapse will not communicate the name of devices over federation (unless configured otherwise), in order to better preserve user privacy. See the upgrade notes for more information.

Also note that we have issued a patch release for 1.59 (1.59.1) which fixes a long-standing bug that started to bite a good amount of server administrators. Server admins that are looking into upgrading their instance to Synapse 1.59 are recommended to upgrade to 1.59.1 rather than 1.59.0.

See the full changelog for a complete list of changes in this release. Also please have a look at the upgrade notes for this version.

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 (in no particular order) Beeper, Dirk Klimpel, Šimon Brandner, henryclw and Andrew Do.