20221125.md

Repository activities from 2022-11-11 to 2022-11-25

Repository roundup

I've been thrilled by two recent works this fortnight. One has been mainly driven by flypig and will allow to have the browser follow the ambience major, wheter it is a light or a dark ambience. It has been a long time since there has been no development related to ambience integration and having the browser following the scheme is a very nice addition. The second commit that attracted my attention was submitted by pvuorela in voicecall repository. But I let you read it further…

Telephony stack

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

• voicecall, the opens source part of the calling application, pvuorela reworked the ringtone playback request send by the application on incoming call. He mentioned in the pull request description: "The ringtone playback might depend on the caller contact details". Is it a step in the direction of per-contact ringtone, or more flexibility to get ringing phone in not-disturb mode for specific contacts ? Let's wait and see…

• sailfish-log-viewer, an application to fetch logs, slava uploaded his harbour-logger application under the main Sailfish OS repositories. This application can be used to gather logs from the telephony stack.

Multimedia

• opus, an audio codec for use in low-delay speech and audio communication, mal disabled the unit tests during packaging.

• qtdocgallery, Qt module to create a gallery, pvuorela adjusted the life-time of the main object to avoid being deleted too late. This was creating issues when disconnecting from tracker.

• alsa-lib, the library to handle the sound using the ALSA interface, mal updated it to 1.2.8.

• alsa-plugins, the plugins for ALSA, mal updated it to 1.2.7.1.

• alsa-utils, CLI tools for ALSA, mal updated it to 1.2.8.

• libsdl, a multimedia library, mal is working on updating it to 2.26.

• ngfd, the non graphical feedback daemon handling sound and vibration feedback, thaodan got merged his proposition to improve the documentation for the "custom" sound effect, as supported or not by the hardware.

Network

• wpa_supplicant, for accessing WPA and WPA2 protected WiFi networks, thaodan updated it to 2.10, and refactored packaging.

• connman, the connection manager, LaakkonenJussi synchronized with various upstream commits fixing several security issues, and also updating scripts to use Python 3. LaakkonenJussi submitted a pull request not to timeout VPN that are waiting for credentials.

Browser

• sailfish-browser, the browser application itself, flypig changed the timing of tab opening at startup to ensure that tab opened by an external application can be closed also (like for a OAuth process). flypig also proposed to add a new combo box in the setting page to select the preferred colour scheme.

• gecko-dev, the browser engine, flypig linked the colour scheme to the ui.systemUsesDarkTheme setting, so the ambience can influence the colour scheme.

• sailfish-components-webview, the high-level QML components exposing a web page, flypig described the new property for colour scheme change, allowing the web pages to follow the ambience light or dark theme.

• qtmozembed, Qt bindings for the Gecko engine, flypig binded ui.systemUsesDarkTheme with the new colour scheme property.

Synchronisation

• buteo-syncfw, the framework handling synchronisation, pvuorela moved the files used by Buteo, like the profile descriptions or the logs, from .cache/msyncd to .local/share/system/privileged/msyncd.

• buteo-sync-plugins, various plugins including Bluetooth synchronisation, pvuorela used the new data location to avoid the deprecated cache location.

• buteo-syncml, the SyncML plugin, pvuorela also updated the data location.

Main user interface

• lipstick, the home screen code (open source parts), pvuorela got a request in to expose removeNotification() to the public QML API. He also re-added the led blinking for instant messaging notification (notification feedback being under rework).

Low level libraries and utilities

• ssu, the seamless software updater, martyone has reworked packaging and moved the vendor data examples with all other examples. rainemak completed the task by making the 'ssu-vendor-data' package a dependances for 'ssu-ks'.

• tzdata-timed, the time zone data (and some other geographical data), dsuni updated the script parsing the wikipedia pages listing the MCC and updated the database. He also updated the unsupported zones. MCC values are used to guess the time zone from the MCC value reported by the modem.

• sailjail-permissions, the configuration files for system-wide sandbox permissions, flypig added the authorisation for the contact application to talk to the browser application via DBus. This allows the contact application to open and close tabs in the external browser for the import wizard.

• mce, mode control entity, spiiroin added a DBus method to poll if the device can suspend charging or not. This is usefull to show or hide the hysteresis controls.

• mce-dev, developer portion of mode control entity, spiiroin added a constant to use the DBus query to know if charging can be suspended.

• nemo-qml-plugin-systemsettings, a QML component used by the Settings app, spiiroin added a QML property exposing the possibility for the device to suspend charging.

• qtbase, the Qt library, rainemak is proposing a patch to interpret touchevents sent by evdev as pencil events.

• contactsd, the daemon handling contacts, pvuorela removed an obsolete usage of a Nokia DBus interface.

• usb-moded, the USB tracking daemon, neochapay is proposing a pull request adding missing includes. spiiroin addressed an issue for devices which does not report proper charging states (like cable connected...) via the usual power_supply device. In that case, he added support for the extcon subsystem to provide such charging information for usb-moded.

• mkcal, storage backend using SQLite for calendar entries, dcaliste fixed the issue with recurring alarms not taking into account exceptions.

• openssl, utilities and library for cryptography, thaodan updated to 1.1.1s for security fixes and performence improvements.

Documentation

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

• jpwalden created a help article on battery life time, where he's mentioning community application like lighthouse or crest.
• jovirkku imported the Zen desk article on setting up an Exchange account, on Google accounts and for generic IMAP (or POP) email services.
• jpwalden added an article on setting up Whatsapp in Android App Support.
• flypig got in his proposition on new pages to explain internationalisation procedures.
• jovirkku imported the article describing the people application.
• jpwalden moved the article on the recovery mode from Zen desk.
• jovirkku imported the article describing the browser and the Bluetooth pairing process.
• vigejolla changed the navigation behaviour to open the root page of each node in the hierarchy from the navigation menu and the articles ordering.
• jpwalden imported the article on the file browser.
• jpwalden is also working on the article describing how to manage the storage space.
• tomin1 added instructions to use the SDK on Fedora 37.

SDK and building tools

• automake, the infamous GNU build system - Makefile generation, mal is upgraded it to 1.16.5 and corrected some issues by adding back the patch to treat 32bit ARM as 'eabi' and by updating it.

• libtool, the Autotools companion to create dynamic libraries, mal is working on an upgrade to 2.4.7.

• amber-web-authorization, a QML module allowing applications to perform OAuth1 and OAuth2 requests, flypig clarified the documentation on how to declare usage of the package in a spec or yaml file.

• git, the famous version control, martyone updated it to 2.34.5. See https://github.com/sailfishos-mirror/git/blob/v2.34.5/contrib/hooks/multimail/README.Git regarding multimail removal. martyone is also proposing to [backport the patch that restrains --invert-grep option to ``--grep](https://github.com/sailfishos/git/pull/6) and not --author` for instance.

• sdk-setup, part of the Sailfish SDK, martyone modified mb2 tool to apply patches with a version control system, if the source are using any. He added a --no-vcs-apply to disable this. He also added various commits to mb2 tool to make it more strict, like not applying patch in submodules... and finaly submitted a last pull request to add a format-patch action to mb2.

Software engineering

• build-compare, scripts to find out if the build result differs to a former build, martyone is proposing a patch to remove the release from version and to ignore the version in Perl.

• ruby, the interpreted scripting language for quick and easy object-oriented programming, martyone added two patches to ensure build reproducibility.

• valgrind, a tool for finding memory management bugs in programs, flypig added a missing build dependency on automake.

• findutils, GNU find and xargs, martyone reworked patches to avoid patching submodules.

• qtwebkit5, Qt bindings for the webkit HTML engine, mal silenced some warnings on build.

• nfcd, the daemon for near field communication, slava linked the daemon and the tools as position independent executables.

• sp-rich-core, a tool to create core with many information, pvuorela fixed the unit tests.