This Week in Matrix 2022-09-23
23.09.2022 19:09 — This Week in Matrix — ThibLast update: 23.09.2022 18:41
A short Matrix Live where we can see the goodness coming to Element very shortly!
Happy TWIMday everyone! Thib is away this week again, so I'm covering for him as your host in this edition of This Week In Matrix.
Following up on last week's tutorial about using Docker Compose to install Synapse, this week Thib explains how to use Ansible to deploy your own Matrix homeserver.
TravisR reports
Earlier in the year, t2bot.io passed 1 Million known rooms and now it's passed 10 Million bridged users (10,039,915 users to be exact, at time of writing). Most of these users will be people who have participated in a channel/chat on Discord or Telegram that was bridged to Matrix through t2bot.io's free service, with about 500 thousand being active each month.
Approximately 8 Million of the users are from Telegram, covering about 11% of all Telegram users (previously 15% based on information available at the time). The remaining 2 Million are Discord users, roughly 0.5% of Discord's user base. For perspective, t2bot.io has just over 683 Million events in the database and is bridging between 30 and 40 thousand people a day.
Like last time, this is just a milestone update, though it's also a good reminder to host your own server if you can. Element's own hosting platform is a great option if you'd like to have a server without running it yourself, and Beeper offers a richer bridging experience than t2bot.io can feasibly provide. If you'd like to go down the self-hosting route, check out Thib's video guide on hosting synapse or last week's Matrix Live for a better understanding of what hosting Synapse actually means.
As for an interesting statistic: despite not having much functionality that deals with Spaces, t2bot.io can see 2687 Spaces from the wider world. The plan in the coming months is to support a way to bridge a whole Discord server to a Matrix Space, making this statistic hopefully more interesting as time goes on.
uhoreg reports
Here's your weekly spec update! The heart of Matrix is the specification - and this is modified by Matrix Spec Change (MSC) proposals. Learn more about how the process works at https://matrix.org/docs/spec/proposals.
MSC Status
Merged MSCs:
- No MSCs were merged this week.
MSCs in Final Comment Period:
- No MSCs are in FCP.
New MSCs:
- MSC3874: Filtering threads from the /messages endpoint
- MSC3873: event_match dotted keys
- MSC3872: Order of rooms in Spaces
Spec Core Team
The Spec Core Team has been continuing to push forward on the spec. Several new MSCs have been opened recently. The Spec Core Team is available in #sct-office:matrix.org when MSC authors think that they are ready for primetime.
Random MSC of the Week
The random MSC of the week is... MSC2162: Signaling Errors at Bridges!
Bridges sometimes are unable to relay messages to the remote service for one reason or another. This MSC proposes a way to allow bridges to indicate that a message failed to be delivered, and allow users to tell the bridge to retry.
andybalaam announces
Usman's internship, working on Favourite Messages, is coming to an end! Check out Usman's blog post and Andy's blog post! To follow progress on Favourite Messages (which is still very much a prototype), check out the tracking issue: Tracking issue for Favourite Messages. Thanks to Usman for being an awesome mentee!
Synapse is a Matrix homeserver implementation developed by the matrix.org core team
Brendan Abolivier says
This week we've released Synapse 1.66.0rc1! This upcoming release deprecates delegating email validation to an identity server (more info here) and includes improved validation around user-interactive authentication, support for a couple of experimental features, as well as the usual batch of bug fixes and performance improvements 🙂
As always, any help with testing and feedback on this RC is appreciated! Feel free to drop any feedback or bug report in #synapse:matrix.org and the Synapse repo respectively.
Second generation Matrix homeserver
neilalexander announces
This week we released Dendrite 0.9.5 which includes a number of fixes, particularly for federation:
- The roomserver will now correctly unreject previously rejected events if necessary when reprocessing
- The handling of event soft-failure has been improved on the roomserver input by no longer applying rejection rules and still calculating state before the event if possible
- The federation
/state
and/state_ids
endpoints should now return the correct error code when the state isn't known instead of returning a HTTP 500- The federation
/event
should now return outlier events correctly instead of returning a HTTP 500- A bug in the federation backoff allowing zero intervals has been corrected
- The
create-account
utility will no longer error if the homeserver URL ends in a trailing slash- A regression in
/sync
introduced in 0.9.4 should be fixedAs always, please feel free to join us in #dendrite:matrix.org for more Dendrite-related discussion.
Matrix server setup using Ansible and Docker
Slavi reports
Thanks to Aine of etke.cc, matrix-docker-ansible-deploy can now set up the new Postmoogle email bridge/bot. Postmoogle is like the email2matrix bridge (also already supported by the playbook), but more capable and with the intention to soon support sending emails, not just receiving.
See our Setting up Postmoogle email bridging documentation to get started.
Aine reports
follow-up to Slavi's announcement: Postmoogle is here!
Actually, he explained it pretty good, so here are some additional links
Source code and Roadmap with implemented and planned features and as usual, say hi in the #postmoogle:etke.cc
A Minimal, simple, multi-platform chat client for the Matrix protocol.
JFA says
Quadrix v1.2.5 has been released! The update is already available for Linux, MacOS and iOS. The Windows and Android updates are awaiting approval from the respective stores. This release has mostly "under the hood" improvements (upgrade to React Native 0.69, React 18 and other key dependencies), but also fixes a few bugs and brings minor UI improvements.
Great news: Quadrix finally made it to https://matrix.org/clients/ :-) Many thanks to @madlittlemods:matrix.org!!!
Please leave feedback/comments at #quadrix:matrix.org or in the issues at https://github.com/alariej/quadrix (stars welcome :-))
Secure and independent communication, connected via Matrix. Come talk with us in #element-web:matrix.org!
kittykat says
- Our code style guide has now finished review and we are now working on updating eslint-plugin-matrix-org to match it
- We will be release an RC2 to fix a regression around progress bars
In labs (you can enable labs features in settings on develop.element.io or on Nightly):
- We’re working hard on updating Threads, squashing bugs and improving performance. We have several MSCs open introducing new functionality to read receipts so that notifications work better than ever.
Secure and independent communication for iOS, connected via Matrix. Come talk with us in #element-ios:matrix.org!
Ștefan reports
- We’re working hard on making the new layout ready for general use, squashing bugs and taking names until everything is in tip top shape. We have a test flight build out: we’ve delayed the release to next week while we iron out the last creases.
- In ElementX land we have started on adding analytics and Xcode Cloud support and have updated our logging strategy. We will also start adopting sliding sync and using the new Rust Timeline providers
Native Decentralised End-to-end Encrypted Group Calls in Matrix, as a standalone web app
Robin announces
Element Call v0.2.7 and v0.2.8 have been released this past week, adding local volume control, full screen mode, audio in screen sharing and, ahem, fixing an embarrassing bug where we broke walkie-talkie mode... 🐑 Oh, and it's also all in TypeScript now. 🚀 https://github.com/vector-im/element-call/releases/tag/v0.2.7
simplematrixbotlib is an easy to use bot library for the Matrix ecosystem written in Python and based on matrix-nio.
HarHarLinks says
simplematrixbotlib has reached version 2.7.0, adding support for end-to-end encryption! 🎉 Come chat over at #simplematrixbotlib:matrix.org!
Here is a summary of things that have happened since we last announced v2.6.3 on this channel:
- 🌐 The repo canonically moved to https://github.com/i10b/simplematrixbotlib, but the PyPI package remains available in the usual place.
- 🔒️ E2EE support! To enable it, simply install the optional e2ee dependencies. Find out how in the manual.
- 😄 Emoji verification support! Enable the option and you'll be able to interactively verify between the bot and your devices. (But mind that for now, in-room verification is not supported, but only to-device).
- ☝️ Fingerprint verification support! As an additional method, the bot will print it's encryption fingerprint so you can "manually verify".
- 🗄️ Extensible config file! It is now easier than ever to add your own configuration options to the built-in TOML config file.
- 🧹 The usual housekeeping, bumping matrix-nio to 0.19.0.
- 🗨️ I (HarHarLinks) will be presenting the library this weekend at #matrix-summit-berlin-2022:c-base.org! If you are in the Berlin 🇩🇪 area, come visit c-base!
The easiest to use bot library for Matrix. Get started in just 10 lines of code:
import simplematrixbotlib as botlib config = botlib.Config() config.emoji_verify = True creds = botlib.Creds("https://home.server", "user", "pass") bot = botlib.Bot(creds, config) @bot.listener.on_message_event async def echo(room, message): if botlib.MessageMatch(room, message, bot, PREFIX).is_not_from_this_bot(): await bot.api.send_text_message(room.room_id, message.body) bot.run()
Matrix Client-Server SDK for Rust
ben announces
With a few people out of office, this weeks has been one of the more quiet ones, but progress has been made non-the-less. Again a lot happens in draft PRs and the background, like with the upcoming Timeline API but also the path forward for integrating the crypto bindings into the js-sdk. There are a few notable PRs merged this week still improving the API (#972 and #973, #961), upgrading to latest ruma, removing dependencies (
parking_lot
) to improve compile times as well as merging the release infrastructure for crypto-js.👉 Wanna hack on matrix rust? Go check out our
help wanted
tagged issues and join our matrix channel at Matrix Rust SDK.
moanos [he/him] announces
This new bot allows users to use webhooks to forward monitoring alerts (e.g from prometheus) to matrix rooms. This means that you no longer have to use E-Mail or Slack to receive alerts. To set it up visit Github Alertmanager or join #alertbot:hyteck.de
An open source chat-ops bot framework
Oleg says
Though this release doesn't include Matrix-related changes. Still there are new feature and fixes worth mentioning:
- The brand new command center backend (docs) from @FabioRosado
- Several fixes to the Slack connector contributed by @chillipeper
- A fix to the Telegram connector from @D3N14L
- Couple of fixes to the Websocket connector from @FabioRosado
- And a lot of fixed links in the docs by @jaas666
- Also now the
dev
Docker image tag (ghcr, Docker Hub) is built on every commit to main/master branchThanks for all the contributions! 🙌 See the full changelog for details.
HarHarLinks says
Greetings to the world from #matrix-summit-berlin-2022:c-base.org!
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Array in a Matrix reports
Matrix AI that generates messages based off other users' messages using a neural network. The bot trains its GPT-2 model using the CPU and is written in JavaScript (Node.JS) and Python. The project's code can be found here.
A privacy focused social media based on MATRIX
Henri Carnot reports
Hi all, quite a lot happened since the last twim post a few months ago.
In a nutshell, we refactored the feed page and user page for a better viewing experience. We also now allow displaying and commenting post images in a dedicated view. Also, you can now send follow request using knocking, thanks to profile as space support. (Yes, MSC is coming)
Finally, we have now multi account support, better stories display and refactored login and settings page.
Well... we almost modified everything :D
See more at https://minestrix.henri2h.fr/posts/
Stay tuned, event organization is coming soon (you can see the first implementation in the blog post.
PS: For those at the Matrix summit, I will be presenting it tomorrow
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Nate Covington reports
I recently made a blog post / video walk through of Matrix, hopefully it will be helpful to someone: https://www.covingtoncreations.com/blog/what-can-matrix-do-for-your-organization
ssorbom ⚡️ says
Have you ever felt lost in the Matrix world? Too many rooms and spaces to manage? Well, back by popular demand (with Timo's blessing), I present, The Room of the Week! Every week we strive to highlight a room or a space that we believe deserves attention for discussing interesting going on across the Matrix Network.
This week on room of the week:
We Are All Tech enthusiasts on The Matrix Network, but do you ever experience Tech burnout? Do you ever wish you could find discussions in The Matrix Universe about things other than Tech? Well, this week we bring you a very technical solution!
Because we are highlighting:
A space where you will find information about everything except technology. Groups are helpfully categorized by Subspace, and feature discussions about everything from musical instruments to beverages. If it isn't about computing, it's there.
If you have a room you wish to see highlighted, join us at: https://matrix.to/#/!bIyiUUnriVoHtYzuPS:fachschaften.org?via=chat.shawnsorbom.net&via=matrix.org&via=fachschaften.org To get your favorite room of the week highlighted.
No ping stats while Thib is away, but you can always join the fun at #ping:maunium.net and #ping-no-synapse:maunium.net!
See you next week, and be sure to stop by #twim:matrix.org with your updates!
Hey folks, welcome to a new edition of This Week In Matrix! Thib is offline this week and next so I'll be taking over while he's away.
This week Thib (is he ever really away?) shows us how to host Synapse with Docker Compose.
Matthew shared with us the Matrix Summer Special 2022! Come read all about what's happened in Matrix-land so far this year, and what's coming up next, right here: https://matrix.org/blog/2022/08/15/the-matrix-summer-special-2022
Andrew Morgan (anoa) announces
Here's your weekly spec update! The heart of Matrix is the specification - and this is modified by Matrix Spec Change (MSC) proposals. Learn more about how the process works at https://matrix.org/docs/spec/proposals.
MSC Status
New MSCs:
- MSC3871: Gappy timelines
- MSC3870: Async media upload extension: upload to URL
- MSC3869: Read event relations with the Widget API
- [WIP] MSC3868: Room Contribution
- MSC3866:
M_USER_AWAITING_APPROVAL
error codeMSCs in Final Comment Period:
- No MSCs are in FCP.
Merged MSCs:
- No MSCs were merged this week.
Closed MSCs:
Spec Updates
This week the Spec Core Team focused on improvements to the spec source itself. richvdh opened a PR for edit events, and yours truly did a small PR to clarify the required state of the response to
/_matrix/client/v3/login/
.There's a lot more open issues available for people to tackle however, so feel free to get involved and help out if you have some spare time!
Finally other than the usual rounds of review by the team, I've been working on a spec process document that aims to explain the practical portions of the text found at https://spec.matrix.org/proposals/, but in a easily scannable manner. Look out for a PR with that in the near future.
Random MSC of the Week
The random MSC of the week is... MSC2871: Give widgets an indication of which capabilities they were approved for! What a mouthful!
Historically, widgets have laid outside of the spec and have only been implemented in a small subset of clients - mainly Element. As of recent weeks though, there's now a team at Element backing the feature. So exciting times ahead!
Regardless, let's highlight this MSC! It solves a crucial problem with a simple solution. Widgets can ask the client they're embedded in to do certain things (if granted certain capabilities), and the client, potentially after asking the user for permission, can allow or deny those actions. This MSC adds the machinery for a further step: the client will tell the widget what capabilities they requested were allowed, and which were denied.
I believe this spec is non-contentious, but is blocked on widgets entering the spec as a whole. Regardless, if this particular piece of the puzzle interests you, or you'd like to read all about widgets in general, the see either the MSC above or this widget spec tracking PR: https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix.org/pull/825.
Synapse is a Matrix homeserver implementation developed by the matrix.org core team
Shay announces
It's the last days of summer here and we are toiling away at making Synapse faster and leaner! In addition to continued work on faster joins, we released Synapse v1.65.0, with new features such as support for stable prefixes for private read receipts and a new module API method for creating a room (plus some other features!), as well as a host of bugfixes and internal changes to make Synapse faster and more stable. Make sure to check it out!
Second generation Matrix homeserver
neilalexander announces
This week we released Dendrite 0.9.4, containing primarily bug fixes:
- A bug in the roomserver around handling rejected outliers has been fixed
- Backfilled events will now use the correct history visibility where possible
- The device list updater backoff has been fixed, which should reduce the number of outbound HTTP requests and
Failed to query device keys for some users
log entries for dead servers- The
/sync
endpoint will no longer incorrectly return room entries for retired invites which could cause some rooms to show up in the client "Historical" section- The
/createRoom
endpoint will now correctly populateis_direct
in invite membership events, which may help clients to classify direct messages correctly- The
create-account
tool will now log an error if the shared secret is not set in the Dendrite config- A couple of minor bugs have been fixed in the membership lazy-loading
- Queued EDUs in the federation API are now cached properly
As always, please feel free to join us in #dendrite:matrix.org for more Dendrite-related discussion.
Matrix Kubernetes applications packaged into helm charts
Ananace says
This week has seen a quite a few Helm Chart updates; element-web got updated to 1.11.3, matrix-media-repo got a Redis usage fix, and matrix-synapse got updated to 1.65.0
Desktop client for Matrix using Qt and C++17.
Nico reports
Nheko now has some very dirty hack to render spoilers on desktop platforms. This does not show the reason and not work in mobile mode, doesn't hide it from notifications or from the sidebar. But it is at least something. Similarly we tightened what tags we allow when validating the incoming html again. Also, as a small fix, DMs should now also properly start with encryption enabled when started from a profile and there were a few crash fixes when searching for direct chat partners and closing the window too quickly or when a user uploads a device with invalid keys.
Secure and independent communication, connected via Matrix. Come talk with us in #element-web:matrix.org!
Danielle announces
- Bug fixes and final polishing has been taking place for our “Start DM on first message” project. This is where the user receiving a new room invite as a DM will not get the notification until you’ve sent a message.
- The team is testing embedding Element Call in Element Web, as well as working on other improvements to Video rooms.
- The new user’s checklist is live in product. It’s our first version so let us know what you think!
In labs (you can enable labs features in settings on develop.element.io or on Nightly):
- Notifications improvements to Threads are underway. The team has been testing the new MSC and related Proof of Concept (POC) which we think will solve most of the issues with Threads right now.
Secure and independent communication for iOS, connected via Matrix. Come talk with us in #element-ios:matrix.org!
Ștefan announces
- We did the AppStore review dance and version 1.8.27 is now available. We even got better usage strings out of it.
- We now have UI integration and performance tests in ElementX. Even more, they’re joined by some really nice Screenshot UI tests. Test all the things!
- We’ve fixed some small bugs and some not so small ones, coming to an Element close to you early next week. The way things are laid out, you might even see a new feature land 😉
- The new app layout testing session went well and we are looking for more iOS testers for future sessions. If you’d like to help out in future sessions, please join #element-community-testing:matrix.org
Secure and independent communication for Android, connected via Matrix. Come talk with us in #element-android:matrix.org!
Danielle says
- We had a very successful testing session with the all new app layout. If you’d like to take part in a future session, join us over at #element-community-testing:matrix.org
- This week we’ve been working on fixing some FTUE crashes and covering some edge cases. Thanks to the community members submitting bugs and more info - keep it coming!
- We’re investigating reports of missing messages, as well as a bug with the Threads beta where not all 'threaded messages' are showing up in the right place…
Multiplatform Kotlin SDK for Matrix
Benedict reports
Trixnity got some minor updates with bugfixes and iOS ARM64 Simulator support.
Ruby SDK for the Matrix communication protocol
Ananace reports
Just pushed another version (2.8.0) of the Ruby Matrix SDK, which drops support for the EoL Ruby 2.6 (and drops a bunch of workarounds for it) in order to support much improved caching of room state data, along with more helper methods and a fix for a floating accessor that didn't get hooked up correctly.
Matrix Client-Server SDK for Rust
ben says
The Matrix Rust SDK team has been busy this week, too. Progress has been made on Siding Sync in particular, the types have been finalised and merged into mainline ruma, and more API has been made accessible via FFI. The new reactive Timeline API has been progressed, it, too, has some FFI definitions now, allowing mobile client to start playing with it. Crypto-JS, too, has progressed, adding support for de/encrypting attachments in an memory efficient fashion. On the crypto-side, the longer on-going refactor and improvements have yielded another few PRs, too, that have successfully merged, while others are still pending reviews. Other than that, we've seen quite a few smaller fixes and improvements, around logging, docs and the examples.
👉️ Wanna hack on matrix rust? Go check out our
help wanted
tagged issues and join our matrix channel at Matrix Rust SDK.
Matrix SDK written in pure Dart.
Nico announces
This week in the dart SDK we mostly fixed bugs. Many of those are related to call negotiations where streams were closed in the wrong order, not closed at all or in group calls the call never learned about new members or the call_ids would not match. There were also a few fixes to the background thumbnailing support added in 0.11.1, helper methods were added to easily send the right message corresponding to the mimetype of some media and fetching a timeline for some event id should work properly again.
We have some support to mark a room as either a dm or a group using slashcommands now, you have more flexibility when implementing the SSSS Bootstrap now (using the extra Bootstrap parameter in onUpdate() and to round it all off, we now have nice coverage numbers as well as coverage display on merge request diffs.
For more info, check the release notes for 0.11.2, 0.12.0, 0.12.1 and 0.12.2: https://pub.dev/packages/matrix/changelog ;-)
ChristianP says
Six days until Matrix Community Summit Berlin 2022
In less than a week the Matrix Community Summit Berlin is taking place at c-base. Join us early on Thursday (25th August) for a Barcamp where we will brainstorm, draft and prototype new ideas. The main conference days are Friday and Saturday (26th and 27th August). We have a schedule all about Matrix hosting, clients and development. With three simultaneous tracks there sure is something for you to listen to. It's also the perfect place to get to know other community members. Look forward to talks, workshops, a signing party, a Matrix P2P live test, dinner and barbecue!
We're not planing to stream or record the event. Our focus lies on providing a great in-person activities. If attendees want to blog or toot/tweet about it, please use the hashtag #MatrixCommunitySummit. Also, German-speaking folks can look forward to more coverage from the event on my podcast. https://chrpaul.de/podcast/
Because we've heard about some confusion: The event is NOT organised by the Matrix Foundation. To minimize the misconception, we've renamed it to the Matrix Community Summit Berlin. This is an event initiated by Yan, jaller94 and other Matrix enthusiasts. We also organise the Matrix Meetup Berlin.
Matrix Space: #matrix-summit-berlin-2022:c-base.org
Schedule: https://cfp.summit2022.matrixmeetup.de/matrix-summit-conference-2022/schedule/
cel says
One week until DWeb Camp
Next week (August 24-28), people will meet outdoors in California to learn and share about decentralized web technologies.
Some attendees and organizers are using Matrix internally for camp chat.
Public chat: https://matrix.to/#/#decentralizedweb-general:matrix.org
Site: https://dwebcamp.org/
Schedule (in progress): https://dwebcamp2022.sched.com
More info: https://gitlab.com/getdweb/dweb-camp-2022/#dweb-camp-2022
Previously announced: https://matrix.org/blog/2022/04/14/this-week-in-matrix-2022-04-14#dweb-camp
ssorbom ⚡️ announces
Have you ever felt lost in the Matrix world? Too many rooms and spaces to manage? Well, back by popular demand (with Timo's blessing), I present, The Room of the Week! Every week we strive to highlight a room or a space that we believe deserves attention for discussing interesting going on across the Matrix Network.
Last week, we were serving coffee, this week, it's tea! Specifically, tea at
Do you prefer sheng or shu puerh? Maybe bit more into lapsang, liuan or perhaps cliff oolongs? Greens or whites? Sencha? Having mood to discuss impact of varios clays and pot shapes? Is it better warm up water in bofura, tetsubin or electric kettle? Simply everything about the tea.
Come join us while the kettle is whistling.
If you have a room you wish to see highlighted, join us at: https://matrix.to/#/!bIyiUUnriVoHtYzuPS:fachschaften.org?via=chat.shawnsorbom.net&via=matrix.org&via=fachschaften.org To get your favorite room of the week highlighted.
No ping stats while Thib is away, but you can always join the fun at #ping:maunium.net and #ping-no-synapse:maunium.net!
See you next week, and be sure to stop by #twim:matrix.org with your updates!
Andrew Morgan (anoa) announces
Here's your weekly spec update! The heart of Matrix is the specification - and this is modified by Matrix Spec Change (MSC) proposals. Learn more about how the process works at https://spec.matrix.org/proposals/.
MSC Status
New MSCs:
- [WIP] MSC3865: User-given attributes for users
- [WIP] MSC3864: User-given attributes for rooms
- MSC3862: event_match (almost) anything
MSCs in Final Comment Period:
- No MSCs entered FCP this week.
Accepted MSCs:
- No MSCs were accepted this week.
Merged MSCs:
Spec Updates
The Spec Core Team had another retro this week, and part of what we talked about was how most of the spec PR writing falls to just a few people. Starting this week, we're going to try and diversify that work across the Spec Core Team, both for reducing bus factor and increasing bandwidth of spec PRs. Hopefully the results of that will be noticeable!
Random MSC of the Week
The random MSC of the week is... MSC3783: Fixed base64 for SAS verification!
For those that don't know, "SAS verification" refers to the act of two devices verifying each other through the use of Short Authentication Strings (SAS). This is the backbone of emoji verification when you verify with another user or one of your own devices.
It turns out that libolm, the olm and megolm encryption library, originally incorrectly encoded the base64 output of the message authentication code (MAC) calculation, which is a values that's passed between devices. Due to trying to maintain backwards-compatibility with older clients, this has not been fixed in newer clients yet.
This MSC proposes bumping the MAC algorithm identifier (which is agreed upon between devices when verifying) to a something new, which allows newer clients to know when to use the new or old (and incorrect) method of calculating the base64 encoding of MAC values.
As far as I can tell, this has no security implications. It's just unfortunate to have incorrect base64 encoding when interfacing with other, non-libolm, implementations of olm and megolm.
Synapse is a Matrix homeserver implementation developed by the matrix.org core team
Shay reports
The Synapse team is hard at work making Synapse faster and leaner. Work continues apace on faster room joins over federation, and it seems that the work might land sooner rather than later, although there are no solid dates yet. In other news, profiling work is being done to determine ways to hopefully increase the speed of local room joins and DM creation. Stay tuned for more information in the future on that. Finally, it was an RC release week. Synapse 1.65.0rc2 was released, and it contains some fun features and bugfixes. Check it out!
Dendrite is a second-generation Matrix homeserver
neilalexander says
This week we released Dendrite 0.9.2 which contains the following updates:
- Dendrite now supports history visibility on the
/sync
,/messages
and/context
endpoints
- It should now be possible to view the history of a room in more cases (as opposed to limiting scrollback to the join event or defaulting to the restrictive
"join"
visibility rule as before)- The default room version for newly created rooms is now room version 9
- New admin endpoint
/_dendrite/admin/resetPassword/{userID}
has been added, which replaces the-reset-password
flag increate-account
- The
create-account
binary now uses shared secret registration over HTTP to create new accounts, which fixes a number of problems with account data and push rules not being configured correctly for new accounts- The internal HTTP APIs for polylith deployments have been refactored for correctness and consistency
- The federation API will now automatically clean up some EDUs that have failed to send within a certain period of time
- The
/hierarchy
endpoint will now return potentially joinable rooms (contributed by texuf)- The user directory will now show or hide users correctly
- Send-to-device messages should no longer be incorrectly duplicated in
/sync
- The federation sender will no longer create unnecessary destination queues as a result of a logic error
- A bug where database migrations may not execute properly when upgrading from older versions has been fixed
- A crash when failing to update user account data has been fixed
- A race condition when generating notification counts has been fixed
- A race condition when setting up NATS has been fixed (contributed by brianathere)
- Stale cache data for membership lazy-loading is now correctly invalidated when doing a complete sync
- Data races within user-interactive authentication have been fixed (contributed by tak-hntlabs)
This brings our current test compliance figures to:
- Client-server APIs: 90%
- Server-server APIs: 95%
As always, please feel free to join us in #dendrite:matrix.org for Dendrite-related discussion.
ChristianP reports
Announcing
matrix-appservice-discord
3.0.0!What? Another week, another major release? Yes, we want to make breaking changes obvious, and the bridge now requires Node.js 16+.
The release fixes the outdated
yarn.lock
file. Thanks to the package maintainers of NixOS to point this out! 👋 Furthermore, mentioning Matrix users in Discord got fixed.And, for the fans of containers, we've re-added the release of Docker images. 🐳 The URL changed and we don't plan to update
halfshot/matrix-appservice-discord
on Docker Hub. The image can be pulled fromghcr.io/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-discord:v3.0.0
.https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-discord/releases/tag/v3.0.0
Desktop client for Matrix using Qt and C++17.
Nico reports
Nheko now shows you a pretty preview for rooms you are trying to join. This uses MSC3266, which you might need to enable in your synapse config, if you want to see more than the roomid of the room you are trying to join. It tries to fall back to the /hierarchy endpoint, but that won't work over federation.
Similarly you can now somewhat edit what rooms are in a space. I grew up with Windows 98, so this is a very nested right click menu. We are still discussing some of the wording choices for the options there, so if you have any opinions about it, feel free to give feedback about it! This is part of the bigger goal to be able to manage your communities from within Nheko, so stay tuned for more features coming in that area.
red_sky (nheko.im) also improved our notifications code on macOS. You can now disable the notification sound in the system settings, which for some reason requires badge permissions to show that option... macOS will always remain a mystery to us! Similarly we fixed the source text for notifications on Windows, which should now not show a stray %1 anymore as well as a few other cleanups.
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Secure and independent communication, connected via Matrix. Come talk with us in #element-web:matrix.org!
kittykat says
- Ever started a DM with someone, only to get distracted and leave them staring into an empty timeline wondering who you are and what you want. Well, it is no more! In this update new DMs will only notify the person you’re messaging once you’ve sent your first message.
- That’s not the only exciting update in EleWeb/Desktop this week, including the newly extended voice messages! Instead of voice messages capped at 2 minutes, users are now able to send a voice note of up to 15 minutes long. Go forth and record 🎤
- In upcoming releases we’re also looking at how to improve a user’s first few days in Element. We know that it can be daunting to stare at an empty screen and wonder how to get going, which is why we’ve designed and built a checklist for new users. This checklist will help them to get off the ground and messaging friends in no time.
In labs (you can enable labs features in settings on develop.element.io or on Nightly):
- Threads improvements are still very much underway. We have a proof of concept (PoC) for improving notifications that we’re testing to ensure scalability and performance.
Secure and independent communication for iOS, connected via Matrix. Come talk with us in #element-ios:matrix.org!
Doug says
- Our release this week was rejected by Apple. Their feedback? Our info.plist comments do not provide enough context as to why we’re asking for access to things like the camera, photos, or contacts. Never fear! We’ve updated our copy and we’re confident that it’s clearer than ever.
- Also in the upcoming release:
- Fixing the crashes that some users were running into when switching space.
- The new in-app notifications now also appear in the notification centre
- And a bug fix for the rare issue of sending duplicate images to a timeline when sending multiple photos
- We’re also working on changing the layout of our mobile apps, and work is well underway on iOS. We’re excited to share these big changes with you so keep your eyes peeled on our socials and in other TWIM notes.
- Join us over at #element-community-testing:matrix.org on Tuesday 16th August at 12:00 BST to try out the new app layout on iOS! There’s a little bit of setup required so check out the room ahead of time for instructions :)
Secure and independent communication for Android, connected via Matrix. Come talk with us in #element-android:matrix.org!
Danielle says
- In the upcoming Android release we’ve fixed some crashes; including where the app would crash if a user attempted putting non-ASCII characters in their MXID during account creation.
- Biometric login is now disabled if the device you’re on does not support biometrics.
- We’ve also been working hard on adding unit tests to increase coverage.
- There’s work being done on the modularisation of languages that may help decrease the complexity of translation and move us towards a set of common strings between platforms.
- Join us over at #element-community-testing:matrix.org on Tuesday 16th August at 15:00 BST to try out the new app layout on Android! There’s a little bit of setup needed so check out the room ahead of time for instructions 🙂
Cinny is a Matrix client focused on simplicity, elegance and security
ajbura says
v2.1: Custom emojis and stickers (Birthday edition)
Hello everyone,
On July 28 project marked its one-year milestone. During this time it has grown at an unexpected rate, both in terms of development as well as popularity. This is great news, so let's celebrate that with this birthday edition.
In this update, we have added Custom emoji and sticker support to Cinny. Custom emoji and stickers were not in our roadmap but that's the surprise. Aren't they cool? Apart from the emoji and stickers, there are tons of other features such as Blurhash, Mark entire space as read, user pills, and bug fixes. Check out the release page for a detailed changelog.
In the case of the roadmap, we are still on that, work on the "Rich input editor" is in progress and will come as the next release. Stay tuned for that!
The update is live on https://app.cinny.in and the desktop app can be downloaded from Github.
Pro-Tip: Join #cinny-space:matrix.org to check out some cool sticker packs. There are some great packs in #stickers-and-emojis:pixie.town too.
Thank you. See you all next time!
tusooa reports
We released a bugfix v0.2.1 . Thanks to nannanko who discovered and fixed this bug. There are also docker images.
0.2.1
- Fix crash when receiving a redacted encrypted event. https://lily-is.land/kazv/libkazv/-/commit/98870fa04fa78361f5092cd77f88895e4a228d34
Ruby SDK for the Matrix communication protocol
Ananace says
A new version of the Ruby Matrix SDK has now been released, adding a new abstraction in the form of a Sinatra-inspired bot DSL, as well as general fixes and improvements. Making a Ruby-based Matrix bot can now be as simple as;
#!/usr/bin/env ruby require 'matrix_sdk/bot' command(:praise, desc: 'Gives you praise', only: -> { room.user_can_send? client.mxid, 'm.reaction' }) do room.send_notice "#{sender}, you tha' man!" room.send_event 'm.reaction', { 'm.relates_to': { rel_type: 'm.annotation', event_id: event[:event_id], key: '👍️' } } end
Matrix server setup using Ansible and Docker.
Slavi reports
Thanks to Charles Wright, matrix-docker-ansible-deploy now has optional experimental Conduit homeserver support for new installations. This comes as a follow-up to the playbook getting Dendrite support earlier this year.
For more details, see our Conduit support changelog entry.
ChristianP announces
Next weekend, Sat 20th and Sun 21st, FrOSCon will be taking place. It's a conference about open source software near Bonn, Germany.
There will be some program around Matrix, though I'm still looking for volunteers to help me with a stand and DevRoom.
For the stand we want a small group to explain Matrix to others. For the DevRoom we want some talks and workshops. Anyone's welcome to ask me for more info or to get involved.
cvwright says
Announcing matrix-locust, a new tool for load testing Matrix homeservers, based on the Python load testing framework Locust. It's very early days for this project, but we're already discovering some interesting results. There isn't an official tagged "release" yet, but anyone interested in this topic is encouraged to stop by #load-testing:matrix.org and say hello.
ssorbom ⚡️ says
Have you ever felt lost in the Matrix world? Too many rooms and spaces to manage? Well, back by popular demand (with Timo's blessing), I present, The Room of the Week! Every week we strive to highlight a room or a space that we believe deserves attention for discussing interesting going on across the Matrix Network.
This week, we are highlighting: #coffee-discuss:matrix.org
A place to discuss buying, brewing, and drinking everyone's favorite morning beverage of choice! I had no idea there was so much Nuance to this topic until I joined this room . For example, did you know there was a correct way to distribute coffee grounds when you first pour to ensure maximum flavor? Neither did I! Whether you are new to the world of coffee drinking, or a seasoned connoisseur of morning Joe, this room has something for everyone who loves coffee.
If you have a room you wish to see highlighted, join us at: https://matrix.to/#/!bIyiUUnriVoHtYzuPS:fachschaften.org?via=chat.shawnsorbom.net&via=matrix.org&via=fachschaften.org to get your favorite room of the week highlighted.
See you next week, and be sure to stop by #twim:matrix.org with your updates!
Andrew Morgan (anoa) says
Here's your weekly spec update! The heart of Matrix is the specification - and this is modified by Matrix Spec Change (MSC) proposals. Learn more about how the process works at https://matrix.org/docs/spec/proposals.
MSC Status
New MSCs:
- MSC3861: Matrix architecture change to delegate authentication via OIDC
- MSC3860: Add media download redirect proposal
- MSC3859: Add well known media domain proposal
- MSC3857: Welcome messages
MSCs in Final Comment Period:
- No MSCs are currently in FCP.
Accepted MSCs:
Merged MSCs:
- MSC2832: HS -> AS authorization header
- MSC3818: Copy room type on upgrade
- MSC3844: Remove unused policy room sharing mechanism
- MSC3786: Add a default push rule to ignore
m.room.server_acl
eventsSpec Updates
This week saw the merge of three MSCs from first-time MSC authors! MSC3818 (Copy room type on upgrade) from @Mikaela and both MSC3786 (Add a default push rule to ignore
m.room.server_acl
events) and MSC3827 (Filtering of/publicRooms
by room type) from @SimonBrandner. Nice work to both of them!Random MSC of the Week
The random MSC of the week is... MSC2499: Fixes for Well-known URIs!
A bundle of small quality-of-life changes to the .well-known server and client endpoints. Removing some ambiguities, replacing old and deprecated endpoints as well as a potential size cap suggestion.
Looks like a good contender for one to push over the line given a bit of review and response!
tulir reports
TWIM: someone in #matrix:matrix.org complained that the image in the spec section is always the same, so I made this gif (actually webp) out of all those images:
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thejhh reports
We've started work on our HG HomeServer written in pure TypeScript, compilable as a single JS file, with no dependencies except NodeJS. It's intended for a special use cases when Matrix is used as a backbone for custom apps. It's lightweight, minimal and for the moment isn't even planned to support full Matrix spec. We might make it possible to run it on browser later. https://github.com/heusalagroup/hghs
Synapse is a Matrix homeserver implementation developed by the matrix.org core team
Shay reports
Another week, another release! Synapse 1.64.0 was released this week, featuring a host of new features, bugfixes, and internal changes aimed at reducing memory usage, increasing performance, and improving the developer experience. Check out the full list of changes here. In addition, work continues on faster room joins. The goal gets closer every day!
Second generation Matrix homeserver
neilalexander announces
This week we released Dendrite 0.9.0 and Dendrite 0.9.1. There are quite a few big changes, including an all-new caching model and several optimisations. This release also moves our baseline supported Go version up to Go 1.18.
The following changes are included across both releases:
- Dendrite now uses Ristretto for managing in-memory caches
- Should improve cache utilisation considerably over time by more intelligently selecting and managing cache entries compared to the previous LRU-based cache
- Defaults to a 1GB cache size if not configured otherwise
- The estimated cache size in memory and maximum age can now be configured with new configuration options to prevent unbounded cache growth
- Added support for serving the
/.well-known/matrix/client
hint directly from Dendrite
- Configurable with the new configuration option
- Refactored membership updater, which should eliminate some bugs caused by the membership table getting out of sync with the room state
- The User API is now responsible for sending account data updates to other components, which may fix some races and duplicate account data events
- Optimised database query for checking whether a remote server is allowed to request an event over federation without using anywhere near as much CPU time (PostgreSQL only)
- Database migrations have been refactored to eliminate some problems that were present with
goose
and upgrading from older Dendrite versions- Media fetching will now use the
/v3
endpoints for downloading media from remote homeservers- HTTP 404 and HTTP 405 errors from the client-facing APIs should now be returned with CORS headers so that web-based clients do not produce incorrect access control warnings for unknown endpoints
- Some preparation work for full history visibility support
- Upgrades a dependency which caused issues building Dendrite with Go 1.19
- The roomserver will no longer give up prematurely after failing to call
/state_ids
- Removes the faulty room info cache, which caused of a number of race conditions and occasional bugs (including when creating and joining rooms)
- The media endpoint now sets the
Cache-Control
header correctly to prevent web-based clients from hitting media endpoints excessively- The sync API will now advance the PDU stream position correctly in all cases (contributed by sergekh2)
- The sync API will now delete the correct range of send-to-device messages when advancing the stream position
- The device list
changed
key in the/sync
response should now return the correct users- A data race when looking up missing state has been fixed
- The
/send_join
API is now applying stronger validation to the received membership event- Fixes a crash that could occur during event redaction
- The
/members
endpoint will no longer incorrectly return HTTP 500 as a result of some invite events- Send-to-device messages should now be ordered more reliably and the last position in the stream updated correctly
- Parsing of appservice configuration files is now less strict (contributed by Kab1r)
- The sync API should now identify shared users correctly when waking up for E2EE key changes
- The federation
/state
endpoint will now return a HTTP 403 when the state before an event isn't known instead of a HTTP 500- Presence timestamps should now be calculated with the correct precision
- A race condition in the roomserver's room info has been fixed
- A race condition in the sync API has been fixed
As always, please feel free to join us in #dendrite:matrix.org for more Dendrite-related discussion.
Matrix Kubernetes applications packaged into helm charts
Ananace announces
This week has seen the usual updates to my Helm Charts - with element-web being updated to 1.11.2 and matrix-synapse to 1.64.0. Additionally, the matrix-synapse chart now also allows for adding entirely custom .well-known data - along with an example on how to use that for MSC1929.
ChristianP announces
This bridge connects users on Matrix and Discord – or other platforms, if combined with other bridges. Earlier this year the community bridge has been adopted by the Matrix.org bridge team to give it some attention. Its most recent update dated back to December 2020 and some fixes waited for a new release.
Well, here it is! v2.0.0 Its breaking changes are the requirement of NodeJS 14 or newer and the usage of
yarn
instead ofnpm install
. Furthermore, the update introduces a changelog and rolls out the guidelines we use for developing other matrix.org bridges.https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-discord/releases/tag/v2.0.0
Secure and independent communication, connected via Matrix. Come talk with us in #element-web:matrix.org!
kittykat reports
- Version 1.11.2 is out!
- „Start DM only on first message“ has landed on develop. Changing the DM flow from invite → message to message & invite at the same time. If you want to see it live, join our testing session at 12:00 BST on Tuesday
- New user onboarding experience is getting closer to release!
- You can also now disable sending read receipts on develop, coming out on 16 August in a release
- Finished porting end to end tests to Cypress! Also started looking into adding support for accessibility testing
- Final comment period for our new code style is over. Next up is updating our contribution guidelines to include changes
- We finished the task around improving tracking of unused code to reduce maintenance burden
Secure and independent communication for iOS, connected via Matrix. Come talk with us in #element-ios:matrix.org!
Doug announces
- Version 1.8.24 is available on the App Store with our new Sign Up and Sign In flows. The update is rolling out slowly and should be available to everyone by Monday.
- The work on our new app layout is coming along nicely with much of it merged into the repo (but disabled behind a build flag).
- In-app notifications will now also be delivered to Notification Centre.
- Continuous improvements are being made to the Live Location sharing feature.
- Integration tests are now run for every PR on matrix-ios-sdk more than doubling the reported test coverage!
Secure and independent communication for Android, connected via Matrix. Come talk with us in #element-android:matrix.org!
adam announces
- 1.4.31 is rolling out which includes the new and improved FTUE onboarding experience along with fixes for markdown lists no longer always starting from 1 and html entities showing up in messages.
- The new app layout is starting to materialise with PRs available on github for anyone interested in having a sneak peek!
- We’re continuing to make improvements to Live Location sharing and cross signing verification as well as investigating performance issues.
ben reports
Development marches forward, with the focus on getting chat into a usable state and task's up as the first MVP app on top: Effektio now support sending multiple images at once in chat, has seen fixes to the chat in widescreen mode, and now support markdown for chat messages. Meanwhile device verification is drawing to a close with a few remaining UI fixes being implement and the state machine for tasks being fleshed out slowly but steadily.
📰 You want updates more frequently and close to when they actually happen? Join our Effektio Matrix News room, discuss general aspect in our foyer or hang out with the devs in our tech channel.
A Social Annotation Tool Powered by Matrix
gleachkr reports
After a short vacation, I've done some new work on populus-viewer. Most of this has been UX and bugfixes, but I've added one new feature that I wanted to share. MSC3775: Markup Locations for Audiovisual Media gives a spec for annotating audio and video on matrix, but it also allows you to annotate images. So, for completeness sake, I've added support for annotating image files in Populus! This might be useful for discussing publication layouts, product designs, or for teaching art history. So populus can now annotate: video, audio, images and pdfs.
As always, if you want to learn more, follow populus development, or discuss the future of decentralized social annotation on Matrix, come join us at #opentower:matrix.org.
Robin says
matrix-widget-api v1.0.0 was released yesterday, reflecting the fact that we're not expecting any big changes to the library's architecture for the foreseeable future, and that it's more or less ready for wider use.
It also comes with a couple of new features ✨ for widget authors: Sending and receiving to-device messages with MSC3819, and getting TURN servers from the client with MSC3846. Together, these features enable some new complex use-cases, such as doing VoIP from inside a widget. See Matrix Live for a preview of what that looks like with Element Call! 📹️
This is as good a time as any to mention that matrix-widget-api doesn't have to just be for web-based apps. If you're building mobile apps with Matrix and want to make use of widgets, running matrix-widget-api inside a web view to liaison with the actual widget can make it a lot simpler to start supporting widget API features. If you're curious, watch Element iOS+Android for upcoming examples of this.
Dave reports
- This week we've been building on the initial work on the pion call server (SFU) from Sean, and have made our very first call through it with Element Call! It's still very early and there's still lots of work to do, but this will allow Element Call to scale up to much higher numbers of people.
- The VoIP team are also looking after widgets now, and in our quest to embed Element Call into the Element apps, we've hit the milestone of releasing matrix-widget-api 1.0.0. We're also making great progress towards embedding into Element Web.
Matrix Client-Server SDK for Rust
ben reports
This week saw a few major improvements on the dev-ex of the Rust SDK (among others): support for refresh tokens landed; we have a setup for integration tests against an actual synapse instance now (and started writing tests); our docs for
main
now contain the js bindings, too; event handlers can now be unregistered and we've added an API for room specific event handlers. Further more, we've refactored the examples (now to be found in/examples
rather than some sub-sub-directory no one finds) and created two more:getting-started
combines the autojoin and command-example with a lot more additional inline comment to explain what is going on andcustom-events
showcases how to use the sdk and ruma types to send any custom events (in that case a ping-ack example) over matrix!This was also a week of fighting the ci. After the integration tests landed, coverage reporting broke and an investigation was kicked off to check whether llvm-cov is in a usable state for us by now (it is not), but a fix was found. We've also started regretting adding
npm
-based workflows in our repo, as we've found ourselves at the end of an upgrade bug and the saw CI failing without us changing anything :shakes_fist_at_sky: . A fix was found quickly by pinning a sub-dependency. On a similar note, we've postponed merging the kotlin bindings until the android team is back on it and available to answer some questions we have, and the wasm-js bindings showed build failures on CI, which the original author will have to take a look at after coming back from vacation - thus delayingcrypto-js
a bit further.👉️ Wanna hack on matrix rust? Go check out our
help wanted
tagged issues and join our matrix channel at Matrix Rust SDK.
Elixir libraries related to the Matrix communications protocol.
uhoreg announces
It's been a while since I've made an update on Polyjuice Client Test. Since the last update:
- several more tests have been added
- there have been some some front-end improvements
- I've also improved the documentation, done some refactoring, and added some helper/utility modules to make things clearer. My goal is to make it easier for people who don't know Elixir to be able to read and write tests without running away screaming.
- compatibility with some Matrix clients has been improved
- added some functions to make it easy for tests to completely override Matrix endpoints
I'm also happy to say that Polyjuice Client Test has helped find bugs in some clients, which have since been fixed.
madlittlemods (Eric Eastwood) announces
This week I'm showing off an early look at the Matrix public archive. As the name suggests, it acts as an archive of history for your world-readable Matrix rooms. This allows you to view historical content day-by-day and jump back years ago to see what your Matrix room was up to.
More importantly, it also allows Google to do the same thing so you’ll probably start finding Matrix content from your favorite search engine and be able to harness the massive knowledge base stored in Matrix. Imagine seeing Matrix logs instead of Stack Overflow answers when googling questions! The new portal into the Matrix ecosystem 🌌
You can also see this demoed in this week's Matrix Live video (at the top of the page).
Under the hood, we use the MSC3030
/timestamp_to_event
endpoint to fetch the messages for a given day and then we sever-side render the events with the Hydrogen SDK. Re-using Hydrogen gets us pretty and native(to Element) looking UI and keeps the maintenance burden of supporting new event types in Hydrogen.If you want to follow what’s going on and see how it's coming along, you can checkout the project on GitHub, https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-public-archive
moanos [he/him] says
Thanks to @lifeofbrian:justprojects.de and @ben:rs485.network the Docker image of the bot was shrunk from 406.28 MB to 69 MB (nice)! You can get the new image from Dockerhub or install it via the matrix-docker-ansible-deploy.
jbara announces
I was able to to host a matrix-synapse server on termux app on an android device. I documented the process on termux-synapse github repo And started working on a script that automates the process (final commit is being currently tested before pushing). It was a "for fun" type of thing. But I can see it being useful for people who do not have access to a raspberry pi (such as myself at the moment) to use as a small homeserver. It can hold up in 1 to 1 Direct Messages and in small rooms.
ssorbom ⚡️ reports
Have you ever felt lost in the Matrix world? Too many rooms and spaces to manage? Well, back by popular demand (with Timo's blessing), I present, The Room of the Week! Every week we strive to highlight a room or a space that we believe deserves attention for discussing interesting goings on across the Matrix Network.
This week, we are highlighting: #libregaming-games:tchncs.de
A matrix space dedicated to finding all of the free open source games, engines, and assets in the Matrix world so that you don't have to. Helpfully organized, and well maintained, it is the Premier stop for open source gaming on The Matrix Network!
If you know of a room that you would like to see highlighted, please visit https://matrix.to/#/!bIyiUUnriVoHtYzuPS:fachschaften.org to let us know of the room that you would like to spotlight.
See you next week, and be sure to stop by #twim:matrix.org with your updates!
TravisR says
Hello everyone! For this week's spec update you get me, Travis, instead of anoa (sorry). The heart of Matrix is the specification, modified by Matrix Spec Change (MSC) proposals - learn more at https://spec.matrix.org/unstable/proposals/
Be sure to read the Spec Core Team (SCT) section in today's update for some exciting news about Matrix though - this has a good chance of affecting how the MSC process works in the future.
MSC Status
Merged MSCs:
- MSC3844: Remove unused policy room sharing mechanism
- MSC3828: Content Repository CORP Headers
- MSC3827: Filtering of
/publicRooms
by room type- MSC2153: Add a default push rule to ignore m.reaction events
MSCs in Final Comment Period:
- MSC3818: Copy room type on upgrade (merge)
- MSC3255: Use SRV record for homeservers discovery by clients (close)
- MSC2836: Threading (close)
- Threading API (close)
New MSCs:
Spec Core Team
The SCT has been powering through MSCs for the second week in a row, using a new internal process to encourage activity and hopefully keep momentum going. If there's an MSC you think should be on the agenda, please visit the #sct-office:matrix.org and raise it for consideration 🙂
We've also been at IETF 114 to talk about MIMI - an initiative to define a standard for messaging interoperability inspired by the DMA. Matrix appears to fit perfectly into this use-case, so we've been talking with various folks involved to ensure Matrix is on the radar, including preparing our own Internet-Draft to demonstrate how it could work. MIMI is not currently a working group within the IETF, but the expectation is that it will be soon - we look forward to this happening, and are eager to contribute to the process here - or proposing Matrix itself to IETF as an initiative in its own right.
Watch this space for updates, or visit #matrix-spec:matrix.org to ask questions 🙂
Random MSC of the Week
The random MSC of the week is... MSC3554: Extensible Events - Translatable Text!
This MSC covers an Extensible Events (MSC1767) schema definition for translatable text! This would allow a client to send a message in multiple languages, with the receiver able to choose which language they're prefer to see the message in (ideally falling back to a default or machine translation if their preferred language was not available).
Like other MSCs that rely on Extensible Events, MSC1767 will need to land before this MSC can. But until then, it's great to see all of the wonderful things this feature will allow Matrix to do!
Synapse is a Matrix homeserver implementation developed by the matrix.org core team
Shay says
Greetings! We have been hard at work on Synapse this week. Work on faster room joins continues. In addition, Synapse 1.64.0rc2 was released. Notable features include:
- support for room version 10
- per-room rate limiting for room joins
- support for Implicit TLS for sending emails and much more, as well as a number of bugfixes, improvements to the documentation, and other changes to make Synapse leaner, faster, and generally more awesome.
Jason Volk reports
This week The Construct server runs on Alpine Linux using freshly cut docker images building on the 0.7 release announced last week. A few images are available for preview while a more complete matrix is filled out. I am proud to announce to TWIM that Construct offers the most compact docker image for a Matrix server at just under 15 MiB; the only caveat is that media thumbnailing won't be available.
There's still a lot of room for optimization and docker experts to critique! Feel free to join the discussion at #construct:zemos.net and check out https://github.com/matrix-construct/construct today!
Secure and independent communication, connected via Matrix. Come talk with us in #element-web:matrix.org!
Danielle announces
- It’s holiday season but that won’t slow us down! We’ve been hard at work fixing defects and improving features.
- Our recently released new search experience is continuing to be improved. This week we’ve added more accessibility, so it can be helpful to all.
- We’ve completely finished the migration of our tests.
- There’s a new “use case” screen for users who sign up, it asks folks who they'll talk to the most on Element and, in the future, that will help us to tailor the experience.
In labs (you can enable labs features in settings on develop.element.io or on Nightly):
- Video rooms continue to improve. Check it out!
Secure and independent communication for iOS, connected via Matrix. Come talk with us in #element-ios:matrix.org!
Ștefan reports
- It’s an exciting week for both our mobile teams as we’re ready to release our new authentication flow! If you’ve been reading TWIM for a while you’ll know that we’ve been working hard, across all Element teams, to improve our onboarding experience. Part of this work on iOS was a new Create Account flow.
- We’re rolling the changes out slowly, so don’t panic if you don’t see the new experience yet!
- In even more exciting news, our test coverage has increased with a big bump. We’ve gone from 12% to 51%!
- We’ve also continued to make updates and improvements to our location sharing feature.
- On the ElementX front we have our first proof of concept for sliding sync (sync v3) working and we’ve almost finished setting up snapshot and integration testing. We also have Rust logs, a new authentication service and performance tests incoming.
- Finally, the account deactivation button has had a change of copy - this keeps us inline with Apple guidelines around deleting and deactivating accounts.
Secure and independent communication for Android, connected via Matrix. Come talk with us in #element-android:matrix.org!
Danielle says
Our new Nightly releases are now available and allowing us to catch any bugs or regressions even faster - exciting!
It will soon be easier than ever to create an account on Element, so if you’ve been waiting for an update before you recommend us to others, it’s nearly time! We’ll be rolling these changes out slowly over the next week or so.
- Alongside the new create account flow will be an updated sign in and reset password experience. Check it out and let us know what you think.
Also in this release we’ve added a “match system settings” to the Font size screen.
Multiplatform Kotlin SDK for Matrix
Benedict says
Trixnity 2.2.0 has been released.
- Mac builds are enabled, which means, that olm is bundled into macOS and iOS builds too. So no need to build olm yourself anymore.
trixnity-crypto
has been introduced, which contains the matrix e2e-encryption stuff and was previously located intrixnity-client
. The relocation allows you to possibly use this in e. g. appservices. Key trust level calculation, key backup, key verification will be moved into it too.- client: basic event relation support has been added to be prepared for the next matrix spec
- client: added server discovery
- updated to kotlin 1.7
- some bug fixes
Matrix Client-Server SDK for Rust
ben reports
It's been a week of quite, constant progress on many fronts, most not that visible to the outside observer. For once, the progress on integration sliding sync into element-x for iOS has taken up speed, with many smaller bug fixes and additional features exposed through the FFI being added and performance optimisations. After the internal jack-in testing tool, this is the first actual trial of sliding sync for rust (and after the js-implementation, only the second client to actually use sliding sync overall)—and it has been tremendous. Latest tests put the loading time to first view on the first 20-ish rooms at a 150ms range 🎉.
More visible to the keen observers of the repository has been that we've updated the
event_handler
API to allow removing existing handlers, an important step towards implementing completion guaranteeing API calls, and that we've support for custom encrypted events now.👉️ Wanna hack on matrix rust? Go check out our
help wanted
tagged issues and join our matrix channel at #matrix-rust-sdk:matrix.org.
Matrix server setup using Ansible and Docker
Slavi reports
Thanks to MdotAmaan's efforts, matrix-docker-ansible-deploy now supports bridging to Discord via the mautrix-discord bridge. See our Setting up Mautrix Discord bridging documentation page for getting started.
Note: this is a new Discord bridge. The playbook still retains Discord bridging via matrix-appservice-discord and mx-puppet-discord. You're free too use the bridge that serves you better, or even all three of them (for different users and use-cases).
Slavi reports
matrix-docker-ansible-deploy now supports bridging to Kakaotalk via matrix-appservice-kakaotalk - a bridge based on node-kakao (now unmaintained) and some mautrix-facebook code. Thanks to hnarjis for helping us add support for this!
See our Setting up Appservice Kakaotalk bridging documentation to get started.
cel says
Thanks Element Matrix Services (EMS) for hosting our homeserver (
hope.net
)!Previously: https://matrix.org/blog/2022/07/22/this-week-in-matrix-2022-07-22#hope-conference
See you in 2024, hopefully!
May Container Hackers (MCH) concluded
https://mch2022.org/
MCH2022 in the Netherlands successfully occurred!
MCH2022 has an IRC-bridged Matrix room: https://matrix.to/#/#_oftc_#mch2022:matrix.org
HOPE and MCH had a bridge room/tent: https://wiki.mch2022.org/Hope#HOPE-MCH_Portal
See you in 2026 or so!
Yan says
By the end of last week we received a bunch of proposal for talks and workshops for the conference. It were all together 32 proposals and we accepted almost all of them.
We released already multiple versions of our schedule. The current version is 0.5 html json
There is even some space left for late comers. In case you decide spontaneously to come and want to talk let us know, we will find a way.
Tickets
You now get tickets for the summit for the fantastic price of 0 euro. We like to know in advance how many people will come. If you have already a ticket and can’t come please let us know. So we can give them to people on the waiting list.
Sharing is caring
I case you have a room or ride to share or you are looking for transport or accommodation please visit our #matrix-summit-sharing:c-base.org.
ChristianP reports
If you'd rather listen to Yan and me talking about the Matrix Summit and its schedule, we recorded a podcast episode for you to get informed on the go.
https://fyyd.de/episode/9085227 (German)
ben reports
The team of effektio, the mobile-first organizing app build on matrix, is happy to announce the new website. Aside from the revamped team section, we are particularly excited about the new product progress page, as the questions "what are you building exactly, and how far are you with the progress" are commonplace. With the product page we hope to provide more clarity what we mean, in actual features, when we say "organize yourself, your friends, family, clubs and all other communities from the palm of your hand". Each feature also links right into the specific section of the Github project, so you can get an unobstructed view of the actual progress happening—and contribute, if you like.
Here we reveal, rank, and applaud the homeservers with the lowest ping, as measured by pingbot, a maubot that you can host on your own server.
Join #ping:maunium.net to experience the fun live, and to find out how to add YOUR server to the game.
Rank | Hostname | Median MS |
---|---|---|
1 | maunium.net | 239.5 |
2 | babel.sh | 432 |
3 | trygve.me | 479 |
4 | envs.net | 555.5 |
5 | maximiliangaedig.com | 660.5 |
6 | alemann.dev | 674 |
7 | kittenface.studio | 752.5 |
8 | pikaviestin.fi | 798 |
9 | kootstra.frl | 881 |
10 | babel1.eu | 946.5 |
Join #ping-no-synapse:maunium.net to experience the fun live, and to find out how to add YOUR server to the game.
Rank | Hostname | Median MS |
---|---|---|
1 | babel.sh | 151.5 |
2 | kernel-error.com | 281 |
3 | babel1.eu | 303.5 |
4 | foxo.me | 447 |
5 | rustybever.be | 499 |
6 | grin.hu | 520.5 |
7 | cutema.re | 679.5 |
8 | zemos.net | 1179.5 |
See you next week, and be sure to stop by #twim:matrix.org with your updates!
An episode with the maintainers of Threematrix, the 100% Rust bridge between Matrix and Threema!
In addition to that, Open Tech Will Save Us will be back on Wednesday 27 at 16:00 UTC! The topic will be "what makes a platform", or more specifically: "are Linux or the web platforms". There are many fascinating topics to discuss, such as "is it possible to create an app for Linux" (it's not as simple as it sounds), "why are some people against theming?", or "why do developers want to use platforms".
And to answer that, who other than the Linux desktop most advanced projects GNOME and KDE, and people working on Matrix, the protocol that wants to become as unmissable as the web itself, and more specifically on a deeper integration of widgets with Matrix clients?
You can join #otwsu:matrix.org to ask your questions on July 27 during the live show, and bookmark either https://stream.matrix.org or the YouTube stream.
Andrew Morgan (anoa) says
Here's your weekly spec update! The heart of Matrix is the specification - and this is modified by Matrix Spec Change (MSC) proposals. Learn more about how the process works at https://matrix.org/docs/spec/proposals.
MSC Status
MSC status updates from the past week!
New MSCs:
- MSC3852: Expose user agent information on
Device
- MSC3851: Allow custom room presets when creating a room
- MSC3849: Observations and Reinforcement
- MSC3848: Introduce errcodes for specific event sending failures
MSCs in Final Comment Period:
- MSC3844: Remove unused policy room sharing mechanism (merge)
- MSC3828: Content Repository CORP Headers (merge)
- MSC3827: Filtering of
/publicRooms
by room type (merge)- MSC2153: Add a default push rule to ignore m.reaction events (close)
Accepted MSCs:
- MSC3786: Add a default push rule to ignore
m.room.server_acl
events- MSC3267: Reference relations
- MSC2832: HS -> AS authorization header
- MSC2676: Message editing
- MSC2285: Private read receipts
Closed MSCs:
Merged MSCs:
- No MSCs were merged to the spec this week.
Spec Updates
Lots of MSCs moving through the pipeline in the last couple weeks! As always, be sure to take a look at those in Final Comment Period above - only a few days left to comment on them before they merge/close!
Otherwise the Spec Core Team is looking to try and get a handle on the current MSC backlog - this means taking a look at all of the open MSCs, triaging them and organising them into a loose priority queue. This is likely to take quite a while to do and may not ever be complete - but should give us and everyone else an idea of what's expected to land in upcoming Matrix spec versions.
Random MSC of the Week
The random MSC of the week is... MSC3217: Soft kicks!
The idea this MSC proposes is to add a possible
m.softkick
field to room membership events of type "leave", which if present will inform clients that the user has only been kicked temporarily, and they are welcome to rejoin.This helps with the IRC bridging use case laid out in the MSC.
ChristianP says
Offline Matrix Spec for Dash and Zeal
I use Zeal – an offline documentation browser using the same docsets as Dash for MacOS. It allows me to browse MDN, ExpressJS docs, NodeJS docs and other languages and formats while not relying on the Internet when traveling. They have "208 awesome docsets", and I guess you know which one I'm missing – or used to miss, until I packaged it myself.
Introducing: The Matrix Spec for Dash and Zeal
If you use Dash or Zeal, give it a try. Let me know, if you find pages that are not working. I hope that Matrix will be included in their list of user-contributed docsets.
Note, this is not an official release distribution of the Matrix Spec. Enjoy at your own risk of this breaking or not getting updated.
Jason Volk says
Construct server has been refurbished to support the Ubuntu 22.04+ platform. I am happy to report that Construct performs faster and more reliably than ever before. It's been a long time since the last update due to COVID-related health problems, but development has picked up again. I'd like to thank @manu_kamath:matrix.org and @uis246 for their contributions, and of course Yan Minari for keeping things together over the past year. Additional work implementing the latest MSC's will continue in the coming weeks so I encourage everyone to show support in #construct:zemos.net and contribute if possible.
Several enhancements have taken place this release, so I'd just like to highlight one here: The media database has been eliminated and has been integrated into the main events database. Construct did always store media in rooms by splitting files into blocks, but it offloaded the content block to separate storage leaving just a hash of the content in the matrix event. Construct now stores blocks directly in event content via hardware-accelerated base64 encoding. The result performs better because there's only one database query instead of two, and the room can be shared between servers in a Construct Cluster.
Construct is a performant and robust Matrix Server and Natural Language Processor. Please be mindful of any laws in your country which require registering your instance for commercial use.
https://github.com/matrix-construct/construct
Synapse is a Matrix homeserver implementation developed by the matrix.org core team
Brendan Abolivier announces
This week we've released Synapse 1.63! This release includes a few features such as better rate limiting for invites, as well as experimental support for MSC3827 which allows filtering public room search results by room type. The latter will, once stabilised, allow for better discoverability of public spaces since it will allow clients to specifically look for them. Read all about this new release on the matrix.org blog: https://matrix.org/blog/2022/07/20/synapse-1-63-released
We've also spent some time clarifying documentation and prompts about the usage statistics Synapse automatically reports if configured with
report_stats
set totrue
. The new documentation page lists exactly what is reported and how this reporting works. This clarification work included removing the use of "anonymised" when referring to this feature to make it clearer that, even though Synapse does not report identifiable information about users and rooms, it does report the homeserver's name (i.e. the value of theserver_name
configuration setting).
Matrix Kubernetes applications packaged into helm charts
Ananace says
Since people seemed to like seeing updates on my Helm Charts; matrix-synapse got bumped to 1.63.0 and then 1.63.1, as well as receiving some expanded handling of workers - all worker instances now come with both startup- and liveness probes attached by default.
A bridge to the Threema messenger
Moritz Stückler says
Say hello to a new bridge in Matrix universe (or rather fediverse): Threematrix. As you might've guessed from the name: It's a bridge between the Threema messenger and Matrix. Threema is a very popular messenger in europe, especially in German speaking countries (it's a swiss company). We've just released our very first alpha version – it's a very simple bot bridge for now, but we have quite a lot of improvements on our todo list. Currently, it only works with the (paid) Threema Gateway API product, but we're trying to talk to Threema to come up with a more affordable hobbyist pricing model for bridge use. Feel free to follow our releases in the GitHub repo, follow our Mastodon account and join our Matrix room to stay up to date or ask any questions.
P.S.: We're two freelance developers and we're being funded by the German Prototype Fund program. If you're an OSS developer in Germany, check them out!
A multi purpose multi platform bridge, formerly known as matrix-github
Andrew F says
Hookshot 1.8.1
Hello all -- since our last TWIM announcement, Hookshot has been updated from 1.7.2 to 1.8.1. Aside from usability fixes and documentation improvements, there have been some notable changes to generic webhook support:
- XML webhook payloads are now decoded instead of being treated as blobs of text. This means they render more nicely as room messages, and more importantly, it allows them to work with custom JavaScript transformations. (#410)
GET
requests for generic webhooks are no longer supported by default. For details, refer to the documentation. (#397)As usual, visit #hookshot:half-shot.uk to follow the development in real-time.
A Minimal, simple, multi-platform chat client for the Matrix protocol.
JFA says
Quadrix v1.2.2 is now available for Linux (https://snapcraft.io/quadrix, https://flathub.org/apps/details/chat.quadrix.Quadrix) and Android (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=chat.quadrix.android). Other platforms will soon follow.
New in this release:
- Spanish translation!!!
- Fix for the Jitsi Meet link displayed to non-Quadrix users (thanks to @alpabrz:matrix.org)
Please leave feedback/comments at #quadrix:matrix.org or in the issues at https://github.com/alariej/quadrix (stars welcome :-)
Desktop client for Matrix using Qt and C++17.
Nico reports
I got a fantastic release for you to day and it won't fit inside a normal sized update so without further ado, here are the highlights:
- Notification counts 💯 (LorenDB, d42)
- You can now see notification counts in more spaces, like your task bar or in the community sidebar.
- For better work-life balance you can hide the notification counts on a per space basis.
- For notification counts in the task bar your desktop environment needs to support the Unity protocol.
- Notifications are also preserved across restarts now.
- Moderation 👮♀️
- You can now change the permissions and aliases of a room.
- Permissions are shown in the Memberlist
- A new
/redact
command to redact an event or all messages by a user.- You can now provide a reason when inviting, knocking, kicking and banning users.
- Faster startup ⚡
- On at least some systems startup should now be instant even with thousands of rooms.
- Encryption improvements 🛡️
- Support for the most recent changes to Matrix E2EE including fallback keys, no longer relying on the sender_key.
- Compatibility and stability improvements when dealing with different base64 encodings and when verifying users and devices.
- Fetch the whole online key backup at the click of a button.
- Integration with external apps 🗺️ (LorenDB)
- Nheko now has a D-Bus API, which you can enable in the settings menu.
- This allows applications like KRunner or Rofi to list and switch between rooms.
If you are reading this a bit early, the release builds might still be cooking, but they should be available in the next few hours. There about 40 more features and at least 30 bugfixes waiting for you, so checkout the release here: https://github.com/Nheko-Reborn/nheko/releases/tag/v0.10.0 . I'd like to thank as always everyone who contributed to this release, it has been a pleasure to work with you folks and I hope I will see a few of you in the next release as well.
As you might be able to tell, moderation features were a big topic this release. But they are clearly not done yet and I expect more of those to land in the future now that Nheko is fairly mature. There are also a few other cool features planned, so while this release is exciting, there will always be more! Same bad client, same bad... wait, this is not my outro!
Please give this release a whirl and tell us how you like it in #nheko:nheko.im!
Secure and independent communication, connected via Matrix. Come talk with us in #element-web:matrix.org!
kittykat says
- We’ve made more improvements to the new search
- Added a new emoji effect for 💝 which you can also send with a
/hearts
command in the composer- CicadaCinema and luixxiul have submitted more layout polishes to the app
- Frequently used emojis will appear at the top of the autocomplete suggestions in the composer
- Meanwhile, work continues on message favouriting and live location sharing
- Lazy Loading tests have now been migrated to Cypress. We are coming closer to finishing porting.
- Code style guide is now in final commenting period
- This week’s release (1.11.1) has been delayed until next Tuesday while we fix some last minute issues
Secure and independent communication for iOS, connected via Matrix. Come talk with us in #element-ios:matrix.org!
Ștefan announces
- Version 1.8.23 (with in-app notifications!) is now available on the AppStore
- The new first time user experience is getting very close to release
- Good progress is continuing to be made on the new home screen layout
- We can now silence unwanted push notifications, dare I say, finally!
- We have started experimenting with adopting Sync V3 in ElementX
- And, as always, we have fixed various bugs including edited messages not showing the right text
Secure and independent communication for Android, connected via Matrix. Come talk with us in #element-android:matrix.org!
benoit announces
- Release 1.4.28 has been dropped, to give us time to fix the regression and performance issue added when key share history was worked on. The next RC 1.4.30 will be done next week as usual.
- We have started to work on using the new Realm Kotlin SDK (we are using the legacy Java SDK at the moment): it should improve the stability of the app (and so the crash free session) and improve devX. Nearly all the possible blocking points have been handled. This will force us to use suspend methods, which will be useful for ElementX.
- Latest tweaks on FTUE have been merged on develop. We will iterate on a few things, but we are close to releasing the feature! New wordings for FTUE are waiting for translations on Weblate. Thanks to all the contributors!
- We have set up a nightly build using Firebase app distribution. We keep it internal for the moment, we will see in the future if we want to open it to the community.
Brendan A. Miller reports
New project!
open-super-dapp-android
is a fully open source, open standard, decentralized "super app" including a secure, encrypted Matrix compatible messenger based off of the Element Messenger, and an Ethereum crypto wallet and web3 browser based off of Alpha Wallet. Our mission is to foster, and provide access to, a decentralized and secure digital commons for all. Github repo: https://github.com/2gatherproject/open-super-dapp-androidOSD is a downstream project of Element, aiming to provide the functionalities of a "super app" like WeChat, just as an open, distributed and not-for-profit app instead of a proprietary, closed and for-profit one.
This software is pre-alpha, actively seeking contributors, donors and maintainers/leaders. Get in on the ground floor and help build something amazing!
Currently, Open Super dApp builds and runs with full functionality of the Element messenger and Alpha Wallet in the same Android app, with all existing tests passing. Efforts to further integrate their functionalities are just beginning.
Next steps include:
- Demonstrate easy to use person to person Ethereum payment functionality between Matrix users.
- Provide a powerful and easy to use messaging and payment javascript API for use by web3 applications accessed through the Open Super dApp. Produce sample web dApps using this API.
- Centralize cryptographic secrets between the wallet and the messenger.
- Build a parallel iOS version for iPhones using Element iOS and Alpha Wallet iOS.
tusooa says
We released 0.2.0 of libkazv. Change log is as follows:
- Support streaming uploads. https://gitlab.com/kazv/libkazv/-/merge_requests/1
- Fix ctx.dispatch() returning promises resolving to empty EffectStatus. https://gitlab.com/kazv/libkazv/-/commit/c7796a6ab8325773bf47fe83254a377204d6abcf
- Prevent leaking full file path when uploading to matrix server by using only basename for the request.
- Deal with timeline gaps properly. https://lily.kazv.moe/kazv/libkazv/-/merge_requests/1
- Record state events in timeline. https://lily.kazv.moe/kazv/libkazv/-/merge_requests/2
- Add support for streaming download. https://lily.kazv.moe/kazv/libkazv/-/merge_requests/3
- Add support for Boost.Serialization. https://lily.kazv.moe/kazv/libkazv/-/merge_requests/4
- Support encrypted attachments. https://lily.kazv.moe/kazv/libkazv/-/merge_requests/5
- Allow custom random generator with crypto. https://lily.kazv.moe/kazv/libkazv/-/merge_requests/6
- Support auto-discovery. https://lily.kazv.moe/kazv/libkazv/-/merge_requests/12
- Support profile API. https://lily.kazv.moe/kazv/libkazv/-/merge_requests/13
- Support kick/ban API. https://lily-is.land/kazv/libkazv/-/merge_requests/15
- Support room heroes. https://lily-is.land/kazv/libkazv/-/merge_requests/16
- Add coverage report. https://lily-is.land/kazv/libkazv/-/merge_requests/17
Deprecated
makeDefaultEncryptedSdk()
is now deprecated. UsemakeDefaultSdkWithCryptoRandom()
instead.
Matrix Client-Server SDK for Rust
ben says
This week has seen an merges of many minor, partially longer-pending PRs into the mainline code base: among them a fix for a longer pending CI problem with Apply builds, an update to latest ruma and many minor fixes and style improvements. We've also gotten the Crypto-bindings for the JS in web using WASM a lot further, the only thing remaining for a release are some last minute PRs and fixes in the release infrastructure. But the most changes to the code base this week have been coming from the appservice department, who've submitted, reviewed and merged a whopping seven PRs this week, fixing various problems and adding a bunch of appservice specific features.
Beyond purely code changes this week has seen a lot of project starts, too: For ones, with the help of the rust team, the iOS Team has started integrating the Sliding-Sync/Sync V3 into the upcoming Element-X-Series; the team has put up the first PR to add integration tests against an actual synapse server (some issues pending); a workshop set out the first ideas for the new upcoming timeline API; and a very interesting draft PR was brought in from community member docweirdo proposing a new API on top of the existing SDK to have futures wait for actual completion - no more sending a message and observing sync for the appropriate response yourself.
👉️ Wanna hack on matrix rust? Go check out our
help wanted
tagged issues and join our matrix channel at #matrix-rust-sdk:matrix.org.
Synapse Maintenance Container – Docker container with tools for synapse & postgres database maintenance
saces reports
Synatainer v0.4.1-RC1
Synapse Maintenance Container – Docker container with tools for synapse & postgres database maintenance
A lot of things added and changed, and I'm sure I missed something, so I will go with a release candidate this time
New in v0.4.1-RC1
- enable PGPASSFILE support for better database password handling
- add tools to detect and maybe fix synapse issue 12507 and 13026 (No state group for unknown or outlier event)
- internal: added an extension for mautrix-go to serve synapse admin api requests
- lots of iternal changes
stui
is a typical golang binary, it's also available as stand alone version from the release pageTools for
No state group for unknown or outlier event
[docker run -it --rm registry.gitlab.com/mb-saces/synatainer:0.4.1-RC1] stui 12507 --help [docker run -it --rm registry.gitlab.com/mb-saces/synatainer:0.4.1-RC1] stui 13026 --help
The tools scan the database for the issues and tells you which rooms are affected. Adding the
--fix
option, it ~~destroys your database~~deletes the bogus extremeties. Use at your own risc. And make a backup.The doc have still a lot of space for improvements…
Start the container without command and let do its magic :)
What it does by default:
- daily:
- purge all rooms without local members
- run the state autocompressor (500/100)
- weekly:
- delete old remote media (>90 days)
- delete old message history from public joinable rooms (>180 days)
- monthly:
- vacuum the database
Source: https://gitlab.com/mb-saces/synatainer
Room: #synatainer:c-base.org
Matrix server setup using Ansible and Docker
Slavi reports
Thanks to Stuart Mumford (@Cadair) for starting (PR #373 and PR #622) and to Julian-Samuel Gebühr (@moan0s) for finishing up (in PR #1894), matrix-docker-ansible-deploy can now help you set up maubot - a plugin-based Matrix bot system.
See our Setting up maubot documentation to get started.
Brendan Abolivier says
Because I don't like having to change my display name to tell coworkers when I'm away, I've written a maubot plugin for an auto-responder bot.
It allows me to signal when I'm away, at which point anyone who sends a message in an existing DM will be sent an automated reply so they know that I'm away, when I'll be back, and how to reach out to me in case of emergencies (it does this once per DM until I come back). When I'm back, I just need to tell the bot and it will automatically turn off the auto-responder and give me a summary of the DMs in which I've missed messages while I was away.
The source code and package for this plugin are available right here: https://github.com/babolivier/maubot-autoreply 🙂
minecraftchest1 says
I just created a simple bot that generates a MSC url from the specified MSC id. The source code for the project can be found at https://mau.dev/minecraftchest1/mscbot/. And example instance can be found at @maubottest1:synapse1.arsrobotics.org Demo and use the bot in #msc-bot:synapse1.arsrobotics.org
Cat reminds us
This feature is already in the MSC bot used in #matrix-spec or atleast in one of those bots.
A release tracker that posts updates into Matrix rooms
Ananace announces
My release tracking bot received a bunch more work since the last update. It now supports tracking repos, groups, and user stars on GitHub, GitLab (both .com and self-hosted), as well as Gitea (though Gitea requires a token for reading stars). And also tracking "releases" - a.k.a. tags - on bare Git repos, at least as long as they don't require SSH key authorization. Things are getting ever closer to a 1.0 release, with only really some missing bang commands and error reporting being the remaining pieces.
cel reports
HOPE conference (today/tomorrow/Sunday) is using Matrix https://hope.net/
ChristianP announces
The Matrix Summit 2022 is a community event taking place Thu, 25th to Sun, 28th Aug at c-base in Berlin. Today's the last day to propose presentations and workshop. The exact deadline is 22:22 (Europe/Berlin).
Will you be in Berlin and have a Matrix project to talk about? Can you organise a workshop about how to use Matrix? How does your community or workplace use Matrix? Submit your proposal now!
https://cfp.summit2022.matrixmeetup.de
ChristianP reports
FrOSCon is a conference that takes place in Siegburg/Bonn, Germany on 21st and 22nd August. Most presentations will be German, but there are some in English as well. It's all about free, open source software.
And, best of all, we'll have an entire DevRoom track for a day – full of Matrix. Furthermore, you can come by the Matrix stand for that famous hallway track. ✨ I know I'll be there. 👋
https://programm.froscon.org/2021/events.html#matrix%20track
Here we reveal, rank, and applaud the homeservers with the lowest ping, as measured by pingbot, a maubot that you can host on your own server.
Join #ping:maunium.net to experience the fun live, and to find out how to add YOUR server to the game.
Rank | Hostname | Median MS |
---|---|---|
1 | envs.net | 309 |
2 | babel.sh | 392 |
3 | keks.club | 473 |
4 | rom4nik.pl | 641 |
5 | babel1.eu | 750.5 |
6 | alemann.dev | 793 |
7 | mindlesstux.com | 892 |
8 | kittenface.studio | 989 |
9 | roeckx.be | 1063 |
10 | supersandro.de | 1110 |
Join #ping-no-synapse:maunium.net to experience the fun live, and to find out how to add YOUR server to the game.
Rank | Hostname | Median MS |
---|---|---|
1 | babel.sh | 172.5 |
2 | dendrite.matrix.org | 275 |
3 | joeth.uk | 294 |
4 | babel1.eu | 302 |
5 | dendrite.babel.sh | 509.5 |
6 | rustybever.be | 708 |
See you next week, and be sure to stop by #twim:matrix.org with your updates!