20230626.md

Repository activities from 2023-06-09 to 2023-09-01

Repository roundup

The summer period was a period of vacation for many people, but not for all. The large number of package upgrades done by mal, attah and Thaodan or the work to port to Qt6 many key components done by neochapay and jmlich, show that Sailfish OS is actually a (Linux) distribution. Which means that it is leveraging capabilities from many upstream projects, which also come with a maintainance cost. This work of updating all the packages can be seen as a work not spent on adding new features visible to the user, but it is essential to fix bugs, keep pace with upstream evolutions... Besides, an element raised my interest from its pull request title: "Add support for Android 13.", done by mal in droidmedia repository.

The network stack

• connman, the connection manager, LaakkonenJussi merged his work on adding VPN support with CLAT and proposed three follow-up pull requests cleaning minor issues after the large changes introduced by the CLAT + VPN work. LaakkonenJussi also fixed a compilation warning on 64bits architectures. Finally, LaakkonenJussi proposed to emit a change signal also when default service is changed, so higher layers can properly interpret it.

• libconnman-qt, QML bindings for the connection manager, LaakkonenJussi is working on completely moving route parsing into ConnMan. neochapay proposed to modify the build system to allow concurrent installation with Qt6.

Telephony stack

• libqofonoext, Qt bindings for specific Sailfish OS extension to Ofono, jmlich updated the build system for Qt6 concurrent installation.

Document and files

• poppler, the PDF rendering library, attah updated it to version 23.07.0.

Mapping and location services

• qtlocation, Qt modules to handle positioning and location, poetaster updated the URLs for tile services, making the QML map widgets working again.

Communication services

• nemo-qml-plugin-email, QML bindings for emails, dcaliste proposed to expose to QML the encryption status of a message. He also proposed some code simplification in attachment handling.

Calendar stack

• mkcal, storage backend using SQLite for calendar entries, dcaliste has proposed to move the alarm handling code in a new class, so ExtendedStorage can become deprecated one day.

• nemo-qml-plugin-calendar, the QML for calendar access, dcaliste proposed to change the importation internal logic to properly handle cases where events sharing the same UID can be in different notebooks.

• buteo-sync-plugin-caldav, the synchronisation framework plugin for CalDAV content, dcaliste found an issue when importing an event containing '/' characters in its UID.

Browser

• gecko-dev, Mozilla's Gecko web rendering engine, attah proposition to enable the dialog element, since this element is now standard and available since Firefox 53, has now been merged.

• gmp-droid, a Gecko Media Plugin to enable use of Android hardware codecs through droidmedia on libhybris-based devices, rainemak continued the work of d-grigorev ensuring that the video encoder is producing a constant bitrate stream, not to conflict with WebRTC bandwidth limiting algorithms.

• gecko-camera, a plugin-based library for Gecko to simplify video capture, rainemak and d-grigorev propagates recent changes from gmp-droid on constant bitrate for video capture.

User interface

• sailfish-utilities, the setting page to restart failing services, ichthyosaurus proposed to readd a restart section for the keyboard. Before, he added a scrollbar to this setting page.

• nemo-qml-plugin-notifications, QML bindings to the Freedesktop notification system, pvuorela is reworking how the kind of action associated to a notification is passed to Lipstick. The input case is now generically handled by an "input" type.

• lipstick, the home screen code (open source parts), pvuorela proposed to add a text property to the action associated to a notification. robang74 proposed to convert the README file to Markdown for a better rendering in Github. Tomin1 fixed a regression noticed by abranson on the actionInvoked() method: a new argument was added, without a default value, breaking backward compatibility for methods still using one argument.

• nemo-qml-plugin-social, social QML adapters for Nemo, jmlich is working on updating the build system to provide concurrent Qt6 installation.

• nemo-qml-plugin-time, QML bindings for time handling (system wide clocks…), jmlich fixed building with Qt6.

• nemo-qml-plugin-alarms, the QML for alarm access, jmlich also fixed build with Qt6 for this component.

• qtmpris, Qt and QML MPRIS interface and adaptor, jmlich proposed modifications allowing Qt6 builds.

• nemo-qml-plugin-connectivity, QML bindings for network connectivity, neochapay modified it to build with Qt6.

• nemo-qml-plugin-thumbnailer, the QML bindings to get image thumbnails, jmlich proposed to update its build system to support Qt6.

• nemo-qml-plugin-notifications, QML bindings to the Freedesktop notification system, jmlich also proposed to update its code to support Qt6.

• nemo-qml-plugin-dbus, the QML bindings for DBus, a pull request from jmlich to update to Qt6.

• nemo-qml-plugin-contacts, QML bindings to access the contact database, neochapay adjusted the code and the build system to allow to work with Qt6.

• nemo-qml-plugin-models, provides QML models for searching or filtering, jmlich proposed to adjust the code for compilation with Qt6.

• sailfish-secrets, a framework to use encryption techniques, dcaliste proposed not to show again the confirmation to access a GnuPG secret if it was dismissed by the user just before.

Audio and video layer

• droidmedia, Android media wrapper library, mal has provided support for Android 13. b100dian noticed on an Asus board that buffers were not automatically destroyed and proposed a fix for it.

• libwebp, a library for encoding and decoding image in WebP format, mal updated it to 1.3.1.

• mpg123, a console MPEG audio player and decoder library, mal updated it to 1.31.3.

• libvpx, a VP8/VP9 video codec library, mal updated it to 1.13.0.

• libsndfile, a library for reading and writing sound files, mal updated it to 1.2.0.

• flac, the loss-less audio codec, mal updated it to 1.4.3.

• libopenal, a library providing capabilities for playing audio in a virtual 3D environment, mal updated it to 1.23.1.

• qtmultimedia, Qt library to handle multimedia, Thaodan proposed to update the packaging to allow multiarch library path.

• ffmpeg, a framework to encode and decode multimedia resources, mal updated it to 5.1.3 and backport a fix for x86 build with recent binutils package.

• libid3tag, a library handling ID3TAG in multimedia files, mal updated it to 0.16.2.

• gstreamer, a multimedia framework, mal updated it to 1.22.4.

• opus, an audio codec for use in low-delay speech and audio communication, mal updated it to 1.4.

Low level libraries

• sensorfw, sensor framework, sunweaver fixed the ordering in the build system. mal fixed a unit issue in the sysfs adaptor. jmlich adapted the build system for Qt6. Herrie82 fixed an issue in LuneOS.

• libsdl, a multimedia library, mal has proposed to upgrade it and it's associated projects to 2.28.0.

• cups, the standards-based printing system, mal has upgraded it to 2.4.6.

• usb-moded, the USB tracking daemon, when working on Qt6 port, jmlich noticed some issue with the DBus interface and discussed the possible solutions with mal and Thaodan.

• nemo-keepalive, CPU and display keepalive and scheduling library, jmlich adjusted the code to allow proper build with Qt6.

• nemo-qml-plugin-devicelock, QML bindings for device lock access, jmlich fixed the installation path of the mkspecs. neochapay proposed to adjust the build system for usage with Qt6.

• libiodata, a library for writing and reading structured data, jmlich proposed to also fix the installation path of the CMake feature files.

• libcap-ng, a library for Linux that makes using POSIX capabilities easier, thaodan updated the packaging to be in phase with Fedora and upgraded the library to 0.8.3.

• openssl, utilities and library for cryptography, mal updated it to 1.1.1v.

• pango, the GLib-based text rendering library, attah updated it to 1.51.1.

• harfbuzz, the text shaping library, attah updated it to 8.1.1.

• freetype, the font handling, attah updated it to 2.13.1.

• libdrm, a Direct Rendering Manager runtime library, mal updated it to 2.4.115.

• vulkan-loader, a graphic library to load Vulkan runtime, mal updated it to 1.3.259 and also for the compilation headers.

• orc, a library to generate optimized code operating on arrays of data, mal updated it to 0.4.34.

• bluez5, the Linux Bluetooth stack, mal updated it to 5.68.

• icu, a library for the International Components for Unicode, flypig is working on upgrading it to 70.1, as it may be required by his endeavour to bring the Gecko engine to version 91.

• libmce-qt, Qt client for mce and a declarative plugin for it, neochapay adjusted the build system for Qt6 parallel installation.

• source-sans-pro-font is a new repository containing some of the font definitions used in Sailfish.

• libmlocale, localisation helpers from Meego touch, jmlich proposed modifications allowing to build it with Qt6.

• libprofile-qt, Qt5 wrapper library for profiles, jmlich also proposed adjustments to build with Qt6.

• timed, time and alarm handling daemon, neochapay adjusted the code to build with Qt6.

• qt-mobility-haptics-ffmemless, a Qt plugin which provides haptic feedback via ffmemless ioctl, jmlich proposed to update it to build with Qt6.

SDK and developer tools

• sample-app-cppqml, an example of code linking C++ and QML, rainemak cleanup sources, applying coding rules on style.

• fingerterm, the console application, jmlich proposed to update the build system to allow concurrent installation with Qt6.

• gmp, the GNU multiprecision library, mal updated it to 6.3.0.

• mpfr, a library for multiprecision calculations, mal updated it to 4.2.0.

• mpc, a library to handle complex number arthmetic at arbitrary precision, mal updated it to 1.3.1.

• btrfs-progs, utilities for BTRFS file-system, mal updated it to 6.3.3.

• attr, a library to manage extended attributes of file-systems, mal updated it to 2.5.1.

• binutils, command line tools, mal updated it to 2.41.

• cmake, the (other) build system, mal updated it to 3.27.1.

• libnice, a GLib ICE implementation, mal updated it to 0.1.21.

• meson, a high productivity build system, mal updated it to 1.1.1.

• busybox, a single binary which includes versions of a large number of system commands, mal added compilation to the module utility.

• rust-cbindgen, utilities to create C/C++11 headers for Rust libraries, flypig is working on updating it to 0.19.0.

• gcc, the GNU compiler collection, direc85 investigated a compiler crash reported by flypig and proposed to backport a patch from upstream.