kernel, i’m trying to sneak around, but im dummy thicc and the clap of my database keeps alerting the guards
ooooooooooooh it’s release time!
it’s been an entire month since the first stable release of akkoma, and we seem… actually to still exist!
appropriately magical. we’ve also got a good little set of instances using akkoma, thanks everyone!
well enough preamble, let’s let into it, what have we got this time around?
Changes
Quote posting!
ever typed “ref: <link>” in your post and wondered why you had to do that? or had misskey posts come through with zero context? well no longer! you can now “quote” posts with the little " icon. this acts as sort of a fancy link, it does not generate notifications.
you can quote all public and unlisted posts that you’re able to see.
The bubble timeline!
so we’ve got the local timeline, yeah? the only one above this is “the whole known network”, which is a massive firehose of posts which can be very scary for newbies on the network. thus, the bubble timeline exists. this represents your “local area” of the fediverse, and consists of any number of instances picked by the instance administrator(s).
this should help new people ease into federation without having to dive instantly into everything being spewed out onto the network.
The emoji pickerinator 5000!
emoji packs have been a thing for ages, but nobody ever really used them for anything except management. now emoji are seperated into packs to pick from, which should make loading them on instances with millions (looking at you, weird german name instance) much less of a pain! also stickers are here too!
Runtime module support extended
did you know the server can handle custom modules inserted at runtime? no? that’s because it was very underutilised. now you can put directories containing submodules in your modules directory and have them load at boot.
Localisation coverage massively improved
pleroma-fe was only really ever developed for english and never got much coverage in any other language - that has now changed!
frontend coverage is at (or very near) 100% in
- french
- catalan
- dutch
and localisation bugs introduced by pleroma have been fixed. grand duke 前前 is no more (may he rest in peace).
Security betterified
the security model has had a few tweaks to make it less of a pain
- “quarantine” is now deprecated, and the instances in “reject” are now blocked both in and outbound
- there is no longer an exception for “public” posts to escape quarantine, they will be stopped as well
- secure fetch mode is now available via admin-fe so it’s easier to fine
Removed some nonsense
did you know pleroma had scrobbling support? no you didn’t, because nobody used it, ever.
there was a bunch of stuff added in the past which was implemented half-heartedly that needed to go
press f for:
- scrobbing
- chats (just use PMs…)
Boot time is now SPEEDY
you know it used to take like 30 seconds to boot an instance? well that was because of prometheus_erl taking an age. that’s been purged and you can now reboot in 5 seconds or less!
Misskey federation is now less breaky
a few bits and pieces here, first off thread breakiness. in the past, threads created by misskey could break due to a bug in pleroma itself. thanks to helene this is now gone!
also, follows have been fixed. if you were in a state where your misskey follows were never coming through to your akkoma instance, you should now be able to unfollow and refollow to rectify this.
Updating
as ever
# from source
git pull origin/stable
export MIX_ENV=prod
mix deps.get
mix compile
mix ecto.migrate
mix pleroma.frontend install pleroma-fe --ref stable
# optionally
mix pleroma.frontend install admin-fe --ref stable
mix pleroma.frontend install mastodon-fe --ref akkoma
# OTP
./bin/pleroma stop
./bin/pleroma_ctl update --branch stable
./bin/pleroma_ctl migrate
./bin/pleroma_ctl frontend install pleroma-fe --ref stable
# optionally
./bin/pleroma_ctl frontend install admin-fe --ref stable
./bin/pleroma_ctl frontend install mastodon-fe --ref akkoma
./bin/pleroma start
Post-install
There is one optional step which can be run once your instance is back up. This is destructive, and is not currently required, but may be in the future. It can be a rather long migration, so I do recommend running it in the background once you’ve installed everything else and rebooted
# from source
MIX_ENV=prod mix ecto.migrate --migrations-path priv/repo/optional_migrations/destructive/remove_null_object_type_records
# otp
./bin/pleroma_ctl migrate --migrations-path priv/repo/optional_migrations/destructive/remove_null_object_type_records
this will remove lots of garbage records from your database - which can make up 30-70% of your objects table. kudos to helene for spotting this.
thankies
this month thankies go out to:
- thomate@ihba, spla@catala.digital, fristi@akkos.fritu.re for going insanely hard on localisation!
- mergan@pleroma.viridianpatriots.com for the emoji pickerinator 5000!
- norm@misskey.biribiri.dev for spotting even more stuff i miss and generally being docmeister at this point
- sfr@[too many places] for MFM wrangling (impossible)
- eris@akko.disqordia.space for touching up the frontend in too many ways for me to count (and enduring my nitpicks)
- helene@p.helene.moe for diving into the lovecraftian hellscape of federation (we’re totally not her alpha test branch now i promise)
- everyone running akkoma and shouting at me when something breaks
if i forgot to name you please bulli me and i will add :{{
a boring note on politics
boooooo, politics
but hey i think it’s good to keep you lot in the loop here
over the past month a lot of people have been spoiling for a fight, and to my own discredit they have gotten a handful. i think we’re gonna have to be mindful going forward that this will happen, the project got more attention than i expected and it is set up as an ideological opposite to other parts of the network. so basically, just don’t give them the fight. if you see me being baited as well, feel free to virtually slap me.
let’s just wa ha ha, y’know?
to that end, we now have a code of conduct that contributors will be expected to abide by from now on.
until next time!
Extra note on ubuntu 22 OTP
Ubuntu 22 is now LTS, and the glibc is not compatible with 20 or before
akkoma supports it via the ubuntu-jammy OTP - see the documentation for more information on flavour detection