20221111.md

Repository activities from 2022-10-28 to 2022-11-11

Repository roundup

There is no particular highlights for this fortnight. But it does not mean no changes of course, and bringing various libraries up to date continues, alongside some bug fixes, cleaning up of the code and a large bunch of polishing to the on-line documentation.

Telephony stack

• ofono, the telephony library, slava adjusted the configuration file parser to allow += syntax like disableFeatures += voice. lduboeuf is proposing a merge request to subscribe to CMAS Presidential alerts like defined in the 3GPP specs.

• liqofonoext, a library for accessing Sailfish OS specific ofono extensions, mal is proposing new code adding support for 5G properties.

• mobile-broadband-provider-info, the database of access point configurations, neochapay contributed updates to TMobile networks.

Browser stack

• sailfish-browser, the browser application itself, nephros got his patch on copied URL, reviewed and included. It is modifying the new function to copy the current URL to the clipboard so it is using percent encoded form and thus be a valid URL and not a beautified one.

• qtwebkit5, Qt bindings for the webkit HTML engine, vigejolla is adding a dependency on the Sailfish webview package for QML bindings.

Multimedia stack

• ffmpeg, a framework to encode and decode multimedia resources, after an upgrade from mal last month to 5.1.1, ffmpeg has been moved to the latest upstream version 5.1.2 thanks to mal again.

• gstreamer, a multimedia framework, the same happened to gstreamer which is also closely following upstream bug fix releases with an upgrade to 1.20.4, with mal's PR. Update was also done on various plugins, like the base ones, the glue to libav, the bad(-ly written) plugins and the good ones.

Calendar stack

• mkcal, storage backend using SQLite for calendar entries, dcaliste changed the validation logic so that changes to any incidence can be written to the database, irrespective of the read-only status of the notebook they belong to. The read-only status is now only treated as a hint for UI (for instance birthday events cannot be changed in the calendar application), but the code actually updating the event when a birthday is modified, does not need anymore to flip the read-only flag before doing the change.

• buteo-sync-plugin-webcal, a sync plugin to sync web calendar resources, dcaliste simplified the code when syncing changes since flipping the read-only flag is not necessary anymore.

• buteo-sync-plugins-social, several sync plugins for Google, Facebook and other proprietary protocols, as for other sync plugins, the code has been simplified not to flip the read-only flag to sync changes from the server.

• contactsd, the daemon handling contacts, the code was also simplified, removing the necessity to flip the read-only flag on changes.

• buteo-sync-plugin, the original sync plugin with SyncML code, dcaliste replaced a call to createDefaultNotebook() from mKCal. It was the only place in all Sailfish OS that this function was called. After this change, it can be safely removed from mKCal API, reducing maintainance burden.

Network stack

• connman, the connection manager, LaakkonenJussi is working to port the fix for CVE-2022-32293 issue.

Main user interface

• lipstick, the home screen code (open source parts), pvuorela provided a patch to ensure that sounds are always played even for custom feedback like communication_led. pvuorela also submitted a request to expose removeNotification() to the public QML API.

Low level libraries and utilities

• mapplauncherd, the daemon responsible to start applications faster thanks to preloading, martyone ensured that success is returned on exit if the option --no-wait is used.

• PackageKit, a D-Bus abstraction layer that allows the session user, pvuorela's large work to get a major update from 1.1 to 1.2.5 has been merged in.

• ssu, the seamless software updater, martyone has reworked packaging and moved the vendor data examples with all other examples.

• sailfish-fonts, a package to gather fonts used in the OS, this repository that was previously stored with proprietary bits of SailfishOS is now hosted on Github.

• usb-moded, the USB tracking daemon, spiiroin got changes merged in, fixing some memory leaks and use after free bugs, but also corrected an issue where connman and usb-moded conflicted on which daemon should handle the hardware network interface when the device is on USB.

• sailjail-permissions, the configuration files for system-wide sandbox permissions, flypig added the authorisation for the email application to talk to the browser application via DBus. This allows the email application to open and close tabs in the external browser as part of the account creation flow (OAuth2). He also is proposing the same grant addition for the contact application so the import wizard can open a browser tab if needed by the authorisation process. pvuorela corrected a bug of the message application being denied the access to the MMS engine when jailled. This could be interesting to know if it's related to https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/4-3-0-12-mms-works-but-mms-retry-fails-stays-waiting-forever.

SDK and building tools

• automake, the infamous GNU build system - Makefile generation, mal is proposing an upgrade to 1.16.5.

• patch, the tool to update code from differences, pvuorela updated it from upstream, so it is compatible with new bison version 3.8. He also cleaned up the spec file in the process.

• ruby, the interpreted scripting language for quick and easy object-oriented programming, thaodan fixed a bootstrap issue with newer bison 3.8 and thus deprecated earlier attempt to workaround it.

• orc, a library to generate optimized code operating on arrays of data, mal updated it to 0.4.33.

• extra-cmake-modules, , dcaliste proposed to upgrade it to version 5.99 (it was previously at 5.90). Version 5.91 is actually needed to build the latest KCalendarCore.

• sdk-setup, scripts, configurations and utilities to build the Sailfish OS SDK, martyone improves the mb2 command to fail on multiple spec files, only if a single spec file is actually need for the desired operation.

• gettext, the GNU tools for multi-lingual support, mal updated it to 0.21.1.

• bison, the parser generator for creating context-free language parsers, pvuorela got it upgraded to 3.8.2.

• automake, the infamous GNU build system - Makefile generation, mal dicussion on the upgrade to 1.16.5 is still going on.

Documentation

• docs.sailfishos.org, website sources, many changes and additions this fortnight:

• jovirkku and jpwalden migrated or modified several zendesk articles like for device lock and security code, SD card, reinstalling Sailfish OS, use the phone with multiple users, internet connection over WLAN or mobile data, backup and restore, file transfer, Internet sharing option, language settings, licencing, keyboard and input settings, Android support and Android settings, backup extraction, contact importation, QR code scanning.
• vigejolla created a page explaining how to create SailfishOS images.
• vigejolla also smoothen a bit the page on the Platform SDK.
• vigejolla modified the support page for automatic listing of help articles.
• jpwalden added links in the article on factory reset.
• olf updated the link on his guide to install Sailfish OS on XPeria devices and reworked the introducting sentence.
• martyone mentioned that MSYS2 is the shell to be used for the command line sfdk of the SDK with Windows.
• vigejolla ensured that help articles are properly sorted.
• vigejolla unified in all pages the mention to SPEC files.
• vigejolla merged the entries for releases and supported devices in the navigation menu.
• flypig is proposing new pages to explain internationalisation procedures.
• rainemak is proposing to fix and better describe logging possibility in the cheat sheet.

Software engineering

• libqtsparql, the Qt support for SPARQL databases, martyone tried to figure out what in the code made the code not producing exact same builds and provided a fix for it.

• gcc, the GNU compiler collection, mal is providing two patches to ensure reproducible builds.