Synapse 1.12.0 is here.

The most important reason to upgrade to 1.12.0 is that it contains performance improvements to boost the efficiency of state resolution in room versions greater than v1 (#7095).

It also contains an implementation of (MSC2432) designed to limit room alias abuse. The MSC contains the full details, but in short admins now have more control over aliases as they appear on their local server.

There is also plenty of ground work for our master process sharding project. Nothing that can be used today unfortunately, but expect big improvements for worker based deployments over the coming weeks.

Please pay special attention to the security advisory in the changelog, TL;DR make sure your installation is using Twisted 20.3.0.

Also, note that once Synapse 1.13.0 is released, the default branch will change to being develop rather than master. Again more details follow in the changelog.

Get the new release from github or any of the sources mentioned at https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/blob/master/INSTALL.md.

Changelog since Synapse 1.11.1

🔗Synapse 1.12.0 (2020-03-23)

No significant changes since 1.12.0rc1.

Debian packages and Docker images are rebuilt using the latest versions of dependency libraries, including Twisted 20.3.0. Please see security advisory below.

🔗Security advisory

Synapse may be vulnerable to request-smuggling attacks when it is used with a reverse-proxy. The vulnerabilities are fixed in Twisted 20.3.0, and are described in CVE-2020-10108 and CVE-2020-10109. For a good introduction to this class of request-smuggling attacks, see https://portswigger.net/research/http-desync-attacks-request-smuggling-reborn.

We are not aware of these vulnerabilities being exploited in the wild, and do not believe that they are exploitable with current versions of any reverse proxies. Nevertheless, we recommend that all Synapse administrators ensure that they have the latest versions of the Twisted library to ensure that their installation remains secure.

• Administrators using the matrix.org Docker image or the Debian/Ubuntu packages from matrix.org should ensure that they have version 1.12.0 installed: these images include Twisted 20.3.0.
• Administrators who have installed Synapse from source should upgrade Twisted within their virtualenv by running:

  <path_to_virtualenv>/bin/pip install 'Twisted>=20.3.0'
  

• Administrators who have installed Synapse from distribution packages should consult the information from their distributions.

The matrix.org Synapse instance was not vulnerable to these vulnerabilities.

🔗Advance notice of change to the default git branch for Synapse

Currently, the default git branch for Synapse is master, which tracks the latest release.

After the release of Synapse 1.13.0, we intend to change this default to develop, which is the development tip. This is more consistent with common practice and modern git usage.

Although we try to keep develop in a stable state, there may be occasions where regressions creep in. Developers and distributors who have scripts which run builds using the default branch of Synapse should therefore consider pinning their scripts to master.

🔗Synapse 1.12.0rc1 (2020-03-19)

🔗Features

• Changes related to room alias management (MSC2432):
  • Publishing/removing a room from the room directory now requires the user to have a power level capable of modifying the canonical alias, instead of the room aliases. (#6965)
  • Validate the alt_aliases property of canonical alias events. (#6971)
  • Users with a power level sufficient to modify the canonical alias of a room can now delete room aliases. (#6986)
  • Implement updated authorization rules and redaction rules for aliases events, from MSC2261 and MSC2432. (#7037)
  • Stop sending m.room.aliases events during room creation and upgrade. (#6941)
  • Synapse no longer uses room alias events to calculate room names for push notifications. (#6966)
  • The room list endpoint no longer returns a list of aliases. (#6970)
  • Remove special handling of aliases events from MSC2260 added in v1.10.0rc1. (#7034)
• Expose the synctl, hash_password and generate_config commands in the snapcraft package. Contributed by @devec0. (#6315)
• Check that server_name is correctly set before running database updates. (#6982)
• Break down monthly active users by appservice_id and emit via Prometheus. (#7030)
• Render a configurable and comprehensible error page if something goes wrong during the SAML2 authentication process. (#7058, #7067)
• Add an optional parameter to control whether other sessions are logged out when a user's password is modified. (#7085)
• Add prometheus metrics for the number of active pushers. (#7103, #7106)
• Improve performance when making HTTPS requests to sygnal, sydent, etc, by sharing the SSL context object between connections. (#7094)

🔗Bugfixes

• When a user's profile is updated via the admin API, also generate a displayname/avatar update for that user in each room. (#6572)
• Fix a couple of bugs in email configuration handling. (#6962)
• Fix an issue affecting worker-based deployments where replication would stop working, necessitating a full restart, after joining a large room. (#6967)
• Fix duplicate key error which was logged when rejoining a room over federation. (#6968)
• Prevent user from setting 'deactivated' to anything other than a bool on the v2 PUT /users Admin API. (#6990)
• Fix py35-old CI by using native tox package. (#7018)
• Fix a bug causing org.matrix.dummy_event to be included in responses from /sync. (#7035)
• Fix a bug that renders UTF-8 text files incorrectly when loaded from media. Contributed by @TheStranjer. (#7044)
• Fix a bug that would cause Synapse to respond with an error about event visibility if a client tried to request the state of a room at a given token. (#7066)
• Repair a data-corruption issue which was introduced in Synapse 1.10, and fixed in Synapse 1.11, and which could cause /sync to return with 404 errors about missing events and unknown rooms. (#7070)
• Fix a bug causing account validity renewal emails to be sent even if the feature is turned off in some cases. (#7074)

🔗Improved Documentation

• Updated CentOS8 install instructions. Contributed by Richard Kellner. (#6925)
• Fix POSTGRES_INITDB_ARGS in the contrib/docker/docker-compose.yml example docker-compose configuration. (#6984)
• Change date in https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/blob/master/INSTALL.md for last date of getting TLS certificates to November 2019. (#7015)
• Document that the fallback auth endpoints must be routed to the same worker node as the register endpoints. (#7048)

🔗Deprecations and Removals

• Remove the unused query_auth federation endpoint per MSC2451. (#7026)

🔗Internal Changes

• Add type hints to logging/context.py. (#6309)
• Add some clarifications to README.md in the database schema directory. (#6615)
• Refactoring work in preparation for changing the event redaction algorithm. (#6874, #6875, #6983, #7003)
• Improve performance of v2 state resolution for large rooms. (#6952, #7095)
• Reduce time spent doing GC, by freezing objects on startup. (#6953)
• Minor performance fixes to get_auth_chain_ids. (#6954)
• Don't record remote cross-signing keys in the devices table. (#6956)
• Use flake8-comprehensions to enforce good hygiene of list/set/dict comprehensions. (#6957)
• Merge worker apps together. (#6964, #7002, #7055, #7104)
• Remove redundant store_room call from FederationHandler._process_received_pdu. (#6979)
• Update warning for incorrect database collation/ctype to include link to documentation. (#6985)
• Add some type annotations to the database storage classes. (#6987)
• Port synapse.handlers.presence to async/await. (#6991, #7019)
• Add some type annotations to the federation base & client classes. (#6995)
• Port synapse.rest.keys to async/await. (#7020)
• Add a type check to is_verified when processing room keys. (#7045)
• Add type annotations and comments to the auth handler. (#7063)

Synapse 1.11.1 is a security release which contains a fix impacting installations using Single Sign-On (i.e. SAML2 or CAS) for authentication. Administrators of such installations are encouraged to upgrade as soon as possible.

Admins not using Single Sign-On to authenticate users are not affected though may wish to upgrade anyway to pull in some unrelated bug fixes.

Thanks to Rhys Davies for the responsible disclosure.

Get the new release from github or any of the sources mentioned at https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/blob/master/INSTALL.md.

Changelog since Synapse 1.11.0

🔗Synapse 1.11.1 (2020-03-03)

This release includes a security fix impacting installations using Single Sign-On (i.e. SAML2 or CAS) for authentication. Administrators of such installations are encouraged to upgrade as soon as possible.

The release also includes fixes for a couple of other bugs.

🔗Bugfixes

• Add a confirmation step to the SSO login flow before redirecting users to the redirect URL. (b2bd54a2, 65c73cdf, a0178df1)
• Fixed set a user as an admin with the admin API PUT /_synapse/admin/v2/users/<user_id>. Contributed by @dklimpel. (#6910)
• Fix bug introduced in Synapse 1.11.0 which sometimes caused errors when joining rooms over federation, with 'coroutine' object has no attribute 'event_id'. (#6996)

A quick bug fix release that affects admins making use of monthly active user limits. You will know if you are affected because 1.9.0 will not start up. Apologies if you were bitten by this one!

Get the new release from github or any of the sources mentioned at https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/blob/master/INSTALL.md.

Changelog since Synapse 1.9.1

🔗Synapse 1.9.1 (2020-01-28)

🔗Bugfixes

• Fix bug where setting mau_limit_reserved_threepids config would cause Synapse to refuse to start. (#6793)

Synapse 1.9.0 contains a bunch of new admin APIs as well as bug fixes to existing ones. In particular we have a new end point that allows admins to query which rooms their server participates in.

Aside from that it is worth noting that we have officially dropped support for SQLite versions < 3.11. Though more generally we would recommend that all admins migrate to Postgres for anything other than test and evaluation purposes.

Get the new release from github or any of the sources mentioned at https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/blob/master/INSTALL.md.

Changelog since Synapse 1.8.0

🔗Synapse 1.9.0 (2020-01-23)

WARNING: As of this release, Synapse no longer supports versions of SQLite before 3.11, and will refuse to start when configured to use an older version. Administrators are recommended to migrate their database to Postgres (see instructions here).

If your Synapse deployment uses workers, note that the reverse-proxy configurations for the synapse.app.media_repository, synapse.app.federation_reader and synapse.app.event_creator workers have changed, with the addition of a few paths (see the updated configurations here). Existing configurations will continue to work.

🔗Improved Documentation

• Fix endpoint documentation for the List Rooms admin API. (#6770)

🔗Synapse 1.9.0rc1 (2020-01-22)

🔗Features

• Allow admin to create or modify a user. Contributed by Awesome Technologies Innovationslabor GmbH. (#5742)
• Add new quarantine media admin APIs to quarantine by media ID or by user who uploaded the media. (#6681, #6756)
• Add org.matrix.e2e_cross_signing to unstable_features in /versions as per MSC1756. (#6712)
• Add a new admin API to list and filter rooms on the server. (#6720)

🔗Bugfixes

• Correctly proxy HTTP errors due to API calls to remote group servers. (#6654)
• Fix media repo admin APIs when using a media worker. (#6664)
• Fix "CRITICAL" errors being logged when a request is received for a uri containing non-ascii characters. (#6682)
• Fix a bug where we would assign a numeric user ID if somebody tried registering with an empty username. (#6690)
• Fix purge_room admin API. (#6711)
• Fix a bug causing Synapse to not always purge quiet rooms with a low max_lifetime in their message retention policies when running the automated purge jobs. (#6714)
• Fix the synapse_port_db not correctly running background updates. Thanks @tadzik for reporting. (#6718)
• Fix changing password via user admin API. (#6730)
• Fix /events/:event_id deprecated API. (#6731)
• Fix monthly active user limiting support for worker mode, fixes #4639. (#6742)
• Fix bug when setting account_validity to an empty block in the config. Thanks to @Sorunome for reporting. (#6747)
• Fix AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'get' in hash_password when configuration has an empty password_config. Contributed by @ivilata. (#6753)
• Fix the docker-compose.yaml overriding the entire /etc folder of the container. Contributed by Fabian Meyer. (#6656)

🔗Improved Documentation

• Fix a typo in the configuration example for purge jobs in the sample configuration file. (#6621)
• Add complete documentation of the message retention policies support. (#6624, #6665)
• Add some helpful tips about changelog entries to the GitHub pull request template. (#6663)
• Clarify the account_validity and email sections of the sample configuration. (#6685)
• Add more endpoints to the documentation for Synapse workers. (#6698)

🔗Deprecations and Removals

• Synapse no longer supports versions of SQLite before 3.11, and will refuse to start when configured to use an older version. Administrators are recommended to migrate their database to Postgres (see instructions here). (#6675)

🔗Internal Changes

• Add local_current_membership table for tracking local user membership state in rooms. (#6655, #6728)
• Port synapse.replication.tcp to async/await. (#6666)
• Fixup synapse.replication to pass mypy checks. (#6667)
• Allow additional_resources to implement IResource directly. (#6686)
• Allow REST endpoint implementations to raise a RedirectException, which will redirect the user's browser to a given location. (#6687)
• Updates and extensions to the module API. (#6688)
• Updates to the SAML mapping provider API. (#6689, #6723)
• Remove redundant RegistrationError class. (#6691)
• Don't block processing of incoming EDUs behind processing PDUs in the same transaction. (#6697)
• Remove duplicate check for the session query parameter on the /auth/xxx/fallback/web Client-Server endpoint. (#6702)
• Attempt to retry sending a transaction when we detect a remote server has come back online, rather than waiting for a transaction to be triggered by new data. (#6706)
• Add StateMap type alias to simplify types. (#6715)
• Add a DeltaState to track changes to be made to current state during event persistence. (#6716)
• Add more logging around message retention policies support. (#6717)
• When processing a SAML response, log the assertions for easier configuration. (#6724)
• Fixup synapse.rest to pass mypy. (#6732, #6764)
• Fixup synapse.api to pass mypy. (#6733)
• Allow streaming cache 'invalidate all' to workers. (#6749)
• Remove unused CI docker compose files. (#6754)

Synapse 1.8.0 has arrived, it contains a whole host of bug fixes and tweaks, most notably fixing some long standing problems with search.

More generally we are spending a lot of time improving the e2ee experience ahead of switching on e2ee by default, so watch this space.

Get the new release from github or any of the sources mentioned at https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/blob/master/INSTALL.md.

🔗Synapse 1.8.0 (2020-01-09)

🔗Bugfixes

• Fix GET request on /_synapse/admin/v2/users endpoint. Contributed by Awesome Technologies Innovationslabor GmbH. (#6563)
• Fix incorrect signing of responses from the key server implementation. (#6657)

🔗Synapse 1.8.0rc1 (2020-01-07)

🔗Features

• Add v2 APIs for the send_join and send_leave federation endpoints (as described in MSC1802). (#6349)
• Add a develop script to generate full SQL schemas. (#6394)
• Add custom SAML username mapping functionality through an external provider plugin. (#6411)
• Automatically delete empty groups/communities. (#6453)
• Add option limit_profile_requests_to_users_who_share_rooms to prevent requirement of a local user sharing a room with another user to query their profile information. (#6523)
• Add an export_signing_key script to extract the public part of signing keys when rotating them. (#6546)
• Add experimental config option to specify multiple databases. (#6580)
• Raise an error if someone tries to use the log_file config option. (#6626)

🔗Bugfixes

• Prevent redacted events from being returned during message search. (#6377, #6522)
• Prevent error on trying to search a upgraded room when the server is not in the predecessor room. (#6385)
• Improve performance of looking up cross-signing keys. (#6486)
• Fix race which occasionally caused deleted devices to reappear. (#6514)
• Fix missing row in device_max_stream_id that could cause unable to decrypt errors after server restart. (#6555)
• Fix a bug which meant that we did not send systemd notifications on startup if acme was enabled. (#6571)
• Fix exception when fetching the matrix.org:ed25519:auto key. (#6625)
• Fix bug where a moderator upgraded a room and became an admin in the new room. (#6633)
• Fix an error which was thrown by the PresenceHandler _on_shutdown handler. (#6640)
• Fix exceptions in the synchrotron worker log when events are rejected. (#6645)
• Ensure that upgraded rooms are removed from the directory. (#6648)
• Fix a bug causing Synapse not to fetch missing events when it believes it has every event in the room. (#6652)

🔗Improved Documentation

• Document the Room Shutdown Admin API. (#6541)
• Reword sections of docs/federate.md that explained delegation at time of Synapse 1.0 transition. (#6601)
• Added the section 'Configuration' in docs/turn-howto.md. (#6614)

🔗Deprecations and Removals

• Remove redundant code from event authorisation implementation. (#6502)
• Remove unused, undocumented /_matrix/content API. (#6628)

🔗Internal Changes

• Add experimental support for multiple physical databases and split out state storage to separate data store. (#6245, #6510, #6511, #6513, #6564, #6565)
• Port sections of code base to async/await. (#6496, #6504, #6505, #6517, #6559, #6647, #6653)
• Remove SnapshotCache in favour of ResponseCache. (#6506)
• Silence mypy errors for files outside those specified. (#6512)
• Clean up some logging when handling incoming events over federation. (#6515)
• Test more folders against mypy. (#6534)
• Update mypy to new version. (#6537)
• Adjust the sytest blacklist for worker mode. (#6538)
• Remove unused get_pagination_rows methods from EventSource classes. (#6557)
• Clean up logs from the push notifier at startup. (#6558)
• Improve diagnostics on database upgrade failure. (#6570)
• Reduce the reconnect time when worker replication fails, to make it easier to catch up. (#6617)
• Simplify http handling by removing redundant SynapseRequestFactory. (#6619)
• Add a workaround for synapse raising exceptions when fetching the notary's own key from the notary. (#6620)
• Automate generation of the sample log config. (#6627)
• Simplify event creation code by removing redundant queries on the event_reference_hashes table. (#6629)
• Fix errors when frozen_dicts are enabled. (#6642)

Get the new release from github or any of the sources mentioned at https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/blob/master/INSTALL.md.

Hi all,

We've just released Synapse 1.7.3 - an important bug fix to address a class of failures due to malformed events. We've seen this in the wild over the last few days, so we'd recommend updating as soon as possible, especially if you are having problems federating.

Get the new release from github or any of the sources mentioned at https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/blob/master/INSTALL.md.

The changelog since 1.7.2 is:

🔗Synapse 1.7.3 (2019-12-31)

This release fixes a long-standing bug in the state resolution algorithm.

🔗Bugfixes

• Fix exceptions caused by state resolution choking on malformed events. (#6608)

Hi all,

We've just released Synapse 1.7.2 - a minor point release to address two regressions which snuck into 1.7.0 and 1.7.1. Sorry for the upgrade faff; hopefully we will be back to a saner release cadence shortly. Reminder that if you are on 1.7.0 or earlier you should upgrade asap as 1.7.1 contained security fixes.

Get the new release from github or any of the sources mentioned at https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/blob/master/INSTALL.md.

The changelog since 1.7.1 is:

🔗Synapse 1.7.2 (2019-12-20)

This release fixes some regressions introduced in Synapse 1.7.0 and 1.7.1.

🔗Bugfixes

• Fix a regression introduced in Synapse 1.7.1 which caused errors when attempting to backfill rooms over federation. (#6576)
• Fix a bug introduced in Synapse 1.7.0 which caused an error on startup when upgrading from versions before 1.3.0. (#6578)

Hi folks; today we are releasing Synapse 1.7.1.

This is a security release which fixes some problems which affected all previous versions of Synapse. We advise all admins whose servers are open to public federation to upgrade as soon as possible.

Full details follow, but the most important change improves event authorization, thereby preventing the ability to add certain events to a given room erroneously.

You can get the new release from github or any of the sources mentioned at https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/blob/master/INSTALL.md.

The changelog since 1.7.0 follows:

🔗Security updates

• Fix a bug which could cause room events to be incorrectly authorized using events from a different room. (#6501, #6503, #6521, #6524, #6530, #6531)
• Fix a bug causing responses to the /context client endpoint to not use the pruned version of the event. (#6553)
• Fix a cause of state resets in room versions 2 onwards. (#6556, #6560)

🔗Bugfixes

• Fix a bug which could cause the federation server to incorrectly return errors when handling certain obscure event graphs. (#6526, #6527)

Hello people, it’s Synapse 1.7.0 time.

This release includes some long requested features, most notably the ability to automatically delete message data after a predefined period. For more details take a look at the config here ─ it should be pretty self explanatory.

Another significant change this release is to explicitly set room directories to be private by default. Previously it was possible to inadvertently configure the directory to be visible to arbitrary Matrix servers and the internet in general.

This means that for those admins who want their room directories to be publicly searchable (matrix.org for instance) they need to explicitly say so in the config. For more details see the upgrade notes and our blog post explaining the situation in greater detail.

We also have early support for ephemeral messages, as well as the ability to specify a reason when rejecting an invite (amongst other actions).

Aside from all of that, we want to let you know about some changes on the horizon. Currently Synapse runs Sqlite by default. This is great in that it gets new admins going quickly without needing to install and configure Postgres. The downside of using Sqlite is that it offers very poor performance, especially once a server tries to join the federation. In truth Sqlite is only really there to demonstrate the service, but for anything other than the most trivial cases it is essential to migrate to Postgres.

Over the past few months we’ve been working to improve the migration path to Postgres such that finally we feel confident to actively encourage admins to migrate. What’s more, in a future release we will forcibly prevent SQLite-backed servers federating unless the admin explicitly sets a config flag to show that they understand the trade-off they are making.

Overall we see these changes as something that will improve everyone’s experience of the matrix federation. We’ll talk more about this closer to the time, but please expect a change in the coming months and if you are running SQLite, consider this a nudge to get yourself migrated.

As ever, you can get the new update here or any of the sources mentioned at https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse. Also, check out our Synapse installation guide page.

The changelog since 1.6.1 follows:

🔗Synapse 1.7.0 (2019-12-13)

This release changes the default settings so that only local authenticated users can query the server's room directory. See the upgrade notes for details.

Support for SQLite versions before 3.11 is now deprecated. A future release will refuse to start if used with an SQLite version before 3.11.

Administrators are reminded that SQLite should not be used for production instances. Instructions for migrating to Postgres are available here. A future release of synapse will, by default, disable federation for servers using SQLite.

No significant changes since 1.7.0rc2.

🔗Synapse 1.7.0rc2 (2019-12-11)

🔗Bugfixes

• Fix incorrect error message for invalid requests when setting user's avatar URL. (#6497)
• Fix support for SQLite 3.7. (#6499)
• Fix regression where sending email push would not work when using a pusher worker. (#6507, #6509)

🔗Synapse 1.7.0rc1 (2019-12-09)

🔗Features

• Implement per-room message retention policies. (#5815, #6436)
• Add etag and count fields to key backup endpoints to help clients guess if there are new keys. (#5858)
• Add /admin/v2/users endpoint with pagination. Contributed by Awesome Technologies Innovationslabor GmbH. (#5925)
• Require User-Interactive Authentication for /account/3pid/add, meaning the user's password will be required to add a third-party ID to their account. (#6119)
• Implement the /_matrix/federation/unstable/net.atleastfornow/state/<context> API as drafted in MSC2314. (#6176)
• Configure privacy-preserving settings by default for the room directory. (#6355)
• Add ephemeral messages support by partially implementing MSC2228. (#6409)
• Add support for MSC 2367, which allows specifying a reason on all membership events. (#6434)

🔗Bugfixes

• Transfer non-standard power levels on room upgrade. (#6237)
• Fix error from the Pillow library when uploading RGBA images. (#6241)
• Correctly apply the event filter to the state, events_before and events_after fields in the response to /context requests. (#6329)
• Fix caching devices for remote users when using workers, so that we don't attempt to refetch (and potentially fail) each time a user requests devices. (#6332)
• Prevent account data syncs getting lost across TCP replication. (#6333)
• Fix bug: TypeError in register_user() while using LDAP auth module. (#6406)
• Fix an intermittent exception when handling read-receipts. (#6408)
• Fix broken guest registration when there are existing blocks of numeric user IDs. (#6420)
• Fix startup error when http proxy is defined. (#6421)
• Fix error when using synapse_port_db on a vanilla synapse db. (#6449)
• Fix uploading multiple cross signing signatures for the same user. (#6451)
• Fix bug which lead to exceptions being thrown in a loop when a cross-signed device is deleted. (#6462)
• Fix synapse_port_db not exiting with a 0 code if something went wrong during the port process. (#6470)
• Improve sanity-checking when receiving events over federation. (#6472)
• Fix inaccurate per-block Prometheus metrics. (#6491)
• Fix small performance regression for sending invites. (#6493)
• Back out cross-signing code added in Synapse 1.5.0, which caused a performance regression. (#6494)

🔗Improved Documentation

• Update documentation and variables in user contributed systemd reference file. (#6369, #6490)
• Fix link in the user directory documentation. (#6388)
• Add build instructions to the docker readme. (#6390)
• Switch Ubuntu package install recommendation to use python3 packages in INSTALL.md. (#6443)
• Write some docs for the quarantine_media api. (#6458)
• Convert CONTRIBUTING.rst to markdown (among other small fixes). (#6461)

🔗Deprecations and Removals

• Remove admin/v1/users_paginate endpoint. Contributed by Awesome Technologies Innovationslabor GmbH. (#5925)
• Remove fallback for federation with old servers which lack the /federation/v1/state_ids API. (#6488)

🔗Internal Changes

• Add benchmarks for structured logging and improve output performance. (#6266)
• Improve the performance of outputting structured logging. (#6322)
• Refactor some code in the event authentication path for clarity. (#6343, #6468, #6480)
• Clean up some unnecessary quotation marks around the codebase. (#6362)
• Complain on startup instead of 500'ing during runtime when public_baseurl isn't set when necessary. (#6379)
• Add a test scenario to make sure room history purges don't break /messages in the future. (#6392)
• Clarifications for the email configuration settings. (#6423)
• Add more tests to the blacklist when running in worker mode. (#6429)
• Refactor data store layer to support multiple databases in the future. (#6454, #6464, #6469, #6487)
• Port synapse.rest.client.v1 to async/await. (#6482)
• Port synapse.rest.client.v2_alpha to async/await. (#6483)
• Port SyncHandler to async/await. (#6484)

Synapse 1.6.0 has landed and is here to brighten your day!

1.6.0's most notable feature is that of label based filtering. It allows for messages to be tagged with a given label so that clients can filter on the label, this means that clients can subscribe to specific topics in a room, such as #lunch.

Completely separately, from here on in new rooms will be version 5 by default, all this means in practice is that servers will respect server signing key validity periods. This won't make a lot of difference in day to day operation, but it is an important security consideration and we now have sufficient penetration across the federation to make version 5 the default.

Aside from that there are a bunch of bug fixes and improvements, including fixing a bug that in some cases prevented messages being decrypted shortly after a restart (#6363) and generally improving the room upgrade experience (#6232, #6235).

As ever, you can get the new update here or any of the sources mentioned at https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse. Also, check out our Synapse installation guide page

The changelog since 1.5.1 follows:

🔗Synapse 1.6.0 (2019-11-26)

🔗Bugfixes

• Fix phone home stats reporting. (#6418)

🔗Synapse 1.6.0rc2 (2019-11-25)

🔗Bugfixes

• Fix a bug which could cause the background database update handler for event labels to get stuck in a loop raising exceptions. (#6407)

🔗Synapse 1.6.0rc1 (2019-11-20)

🔗Features

• Add federation support for cross-signing. (#5727)
• Increase default room version from 4 to 5, thereby enforcing server key validity period checks. (#6220)
• Add support for outbound http proxying via http_proxy/HTTPS_PROXY env vars. (#6238)
• Implement label-based filtering on /sync and /messages (MSC2326). (#6301, #6310, #6340)

🔗Bugfixes

• Fix LruCache callback deduplication for Python 3.8. Contributed by @V02460. (#6213)
• Remove a room from a server's public rooms list on room upgrade. (#6232, #6235)
• Delete keys from key backup when deleting backup versions. (#6253)
• Make notification of cross-signing signatures work with workers. (#6254)
• Fix exception when remote servers attempt to join a room that they're not allowed to join. (#6278)
• Prevent errors from appearing on Synapse startup if git is not installed. (#6284)
• Appservice requests will no longer contain a double slash prefix when the appservice url provided ends in a slash. (#6306)
• Fix /purge_room admin API. (#6307)
• Fix the hidden field in the devices table for SQLite versions prior to 3.23.0. (#6313)
• Fix bug which caused rejected events to be persisted with the wrong room state. (#6320)
• Fix bug where rc_login ratelimiting would prematurely kick in. (#6335)
• Prevent the server taking a long time to start up when guest registration is enabled. (#6338)
• Fix bug where upgrading a guest account to a full user would fail when account validity is enabled. (#6359)
• Fix to_device stream ID getting reset every time Synapse restarts, which had the potential to cause unable to decrypt errors. (#6363)
• Fix permission denied error when trying to generate a config file with the docker image. (#6389)

🔗Improved Documentation

• Contributor documentation now mentions script to run linters. (#6164)
• Modify CAPTCHA_SETUP.md to update the terms private key and public key to secret key and site key respectively. Contributed by Yash Jipkate. (#6257)
• Update INSTALL.md Email section to talk about account_threepid_delegates. (#6272)
• Fix a small typo in account_threepid_delegates configuration option. (#6273)

🔗Internal Changes

• Add a CI job to test the synapse_port_db script. (#6140, #6276)
• Convert EventContext to an attrs. (#6218)
• Move persist_events out from main data store. (#6240, #6300)
• Reduce verbosity of user/room stats. (#6250)
• Reduce impact of debug logging. (#6251)
• Expose some homeserver functionality to spam checkers. (#6259)
• Change cache descriptors to always return deferreds. (#6263, #6291)
• Fix incorrect comment regarding the functionality of an if statement. (#6269)
• Update CI to run isort over the scripts and scripts-dev directories. (#6270)
• Replace every instance of logger.warn method with logger.warning as the former is deprecated. (#6271, #6314)
• Port replication http server endpoints to async/await. (#6274)
• Port room rest handlers to async/await. (#6275)
• Remove redundant CLI parameters on CI's flake8 step. (#6277)
• Port federation_server.py to async/await. (#6279)
• Port receipt and read markers to async/wait. (#6280)
• Split out state storage into separate data store. (#6294, #6295)
• Refactor EventContext for clarity. (#6298)
• Update the version of black used to 19.10b0. (#6304)
• Add some documentation about worker replication. (#6305)
• Move admin endpoints into separate files. Contributed by Awesome Technologies Innovationslabor GmbH. (#6308)
• Document the use of lint.sh for code style enforcement & extend it to run on specified paths only. (#6312)
• Add optional python dependencies and dependant binary libraries to snapcraft packaging. (#6317)
• Remove the dependency on psutil and replace functionality with the stdlib resource module. (#6318, #6336)
• Improve documentation for EventContext fields. (#6319)
• Add some checks that we aren't using state from rejected events. (#6330)
• Add continuous integration for python 3.8. (#6341)
• Correct spacing/case of various instances of the word "homeserver". (#6357)
• Temporarily blacklist the failing unit test PurgeRoomTestCase.test_purge_room. (#6361)