Lemmy 0.19.0-rc.4 and Development Update - 2023-11-03

Here is our regular update that explains what we have been working on for the past two weeks. This should allow average users to keep up with development, without reading Github comments or knowing how to program.

In case you missed the announcement, this week we launched a redesign of join-lemmy.org together with our first annual funding drive. Please consider donating to support Lemmy development.

We are also readying another release candidate 0.19.0-rc.4. As usual it is available for testing on voyager.lemmy.ml and by installing the Docker image on your server. There are no breaking changes this time as we are preparing for the final release. It has been one month since we announced the major breaking changes for 0.19. In that sense we would like to know from developers of Lemmy clients and frontends if their projects are ready for 0.19, as we are planning to release it within the next weeks. There is no specific release date, but we will first update lemmy.ml to a release candidate, and if it works well publish the new release shortly after.

@nutomic is implementing a proxy for remote images, so that clients don't have to connect directly to remote servers and avoid leaking personal information. He also added support for Arabic and Cyrillic usernames and community names. Additionally he made various smaller changes and code rewrites, such as ordering reports and registration applications by oldest first.

@dessalines has implemented numerous minor bug fixes and enhancements. This includes disabling voting for bot accounts, a change to the hot rank to avoid content getting pushed off the feed after mass downvoting, and more. Also added an Platform filter for the join-lemmy.org/apps page, and fixed a memory issue.

@phiresky is extending the /api/v3/site/federated_instances endpoint to include error count and time of last successful send for each linked instance. This will allow determining the exact state of federation between all instances.

@SleeplessOne1917 made two minor improvements to 2FA code input and to the search page.

@hackerncoder relaxed the check for valid displaynames to allow more unicode symbols.

Support development

@dessalines and @nutomic are working full-time on Lemmy to integrate community contributions, fix bugs, optimize performance and much more. This work is funded exclusively through donations.

If you like using Lemmy, and want to make sure that we will always be available to work full time building it, consider donating to support its development. Recurring donations are ideal because they allow for long-term planning. But also one-time donations of any amount help us.

• Liberapay (preferred option)
• Open Collective
• Patreon
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