Friendica 2022.06 released
We are very happy to announce the avail-ability of the new stable version of Friendica. With this release the “Siberian Iris” cycle is closed and we start a new one, the “Giant Rhubarb“. 20 people have contributed directly to the code of Friendica “Giant Rhubarb” over the last year, committing over 2500 pull requests fixing nearly 200 numbered issues and adding new features.
Kudos to everyone who made this release possible by their contributions!
In addition to fixing bugs and improving the performance of Friendica, the highlights of the changes of the last year since the first release of the “Siberian Iris” are
- The UI translations for Arabic and Dansk was added and Friendica supports now left-to-right languages generally better then before.
- We have two new addons (S3 and WebDAV) to use additional storage back-ends for storing the media files.
- The Mastodon compatible API was improved, you now should be able to use most Mastodon clients with your Friendica account.
- The federation with Diaspora*, Mastodon, PeerTube, Pleroma and Lemmy was enhanced.
- The themes (Frio and vier) got some touch ups, and the screen-reader support of Frio was improved.
For details, please the CHANGELOG file in the repository.
The lowest required PHP version Friendica needs on the server was raised to PHP 7.3 and PHP 8.0 is supported.
Breaking Change If you are running a custom addon, please note that the 2022.06 release does a breaking change removing the hooks settings_form and settings_post. Your addon should use the addon_settings hook instead.
What is Friendica
Friendica is a decentralised communications platform, you can use to host your own social media server that integrates with independent social networking platforms (like the Fediverse or Diaspora*) but also some commercial ones like Twitter.
How to Update
Updating from old Friendica versions
If you are updating from an older version than the 2021.09 release, please first update your Friendica instance to that version.
Pre-Update Procedures
Ensure that the last backup of your Friendica installation was done recently.
Using Git
Updating from the git repositories should only involve a pull from the Friendica core repository and addons repository, regardless of the branch (stable or develop) you are using. Remember to update the dependencies with composer as well. So, assuming that you are on the stable branch, the commands to update your installation to the 2022.06 release would be
cd friendicagit pullbin/composer.phar install --no-devcd addongit pull
If you want to use a different branch then the stable one, you need to fetch and checkout the branch before your perform the git pull.
Pulling in the dependencies with composer will show some deprecation warning, we will be working on that in the upcoming release.
Using the Archive Files
If you had downloaded the source files in an archive file (tar.gz) please download the current version of the archive from friendica-full-2022.06.tar.gz (sha256) and friendica-addons 2022.06.tar.gz (sha256) and unpack it on your local computer.
As many files got deleted or moved around, please upload the unpacked files to a new directory on your server (say friendica_new) and copy over your existing configuration (config/local.config.php and config/addon.config.php) and .htaccess files. Afterwards rename your current Friendica directory (e.g. friendica) to friendica_old and friendica_new to friendica.
The files of the dependencies are included in the archive (make sure you are using the friendica-full-2022.06 archive), so you don’t have to worry about them.
Post Update Tasks
The database update should be applied automatically, but sometimes it gets stuck. If you encounter this, please initiate the DB update manually from the command line by running the script
bin/console dbstructure update
from the base of your Friendica installation. If the output contains any error message, please let us know using the channels mentioned below.
Please note, that some of the changes to the database structure will take some time to be applied, depending on the size of your Friendica database.
Known Issues
Regarding the update process none as of writing.
How to Contribute
If you want to contribute to the project, you don’t need to have coding experience. There are a number of tasks listed in the issue tracker with the label “Junior Jobs” we think are good for new contributors. But you are by no means limited to these – if you find a solution to a problem (even a new one) please make a pull request at github or let us know in the development forum.
Contribution to Friendica is also not limited to coding. Any contribution to the documentation, the translation or advertisement materials is welcome or reporting a problem. You don’t need to deal with Git(Hub) or Transifex if you don’t like to. Just get in touch with us and we will get the materials to the appropriate places.
Thanks everyone who helped making this release possible and have fun!
https://friendi.ca/2022/06/11/friendica-2022-06-released/
Friendica 2021.09 releasedThe summer sprint is over and we are happy to announce the availability of the new stable release of Friendica “Siberian Iris” 2021.09. It contains more then 160 pull requests from seven contributors and updates to several language packages from the translation teams.
For a detailed overview of the changes, please have a look at the CHANGELOG. The highlights of the release are
- scheduled postings (scheduling is done in the permissions of a posting),
- the notification system got an overhaul, and
- admins can now browse the logs more comfortable in the admin panel.
How to Update
Please note: With the release of 2021.09 Friendica does require at least PHP version 7.2 or above. Known issues with PHP 8 are collected in the issue tracker at github.Updating from old Friendica versions
If you are updating from an older version than the 2020.03 release, please first update your Friendica instance to that version.Pre-Update Procedures
Ensure that the last backup of your Friendica installation was done recently. We had no problems reported during the upgrade process from 2021.07 to the 2021.09 release candidate, so hopefully you will have a smooth transition.Using Git
Updating from the git repositories should only involve a pull from the Friendica core repository and addons repository, regardless of the branch (stable or develop) you are using. Remember to update the dependencies with composer as well. So, assuming that you are on thestablebranch, the commands to update your installation to the 2021.09 release would be
cd friendicagit pullbin/composer.phar install --no-devcd addongit pull
If you want to use a different branch then thestableone, you need to checkout the branch before your perform the git pull.Pulling in the dependencies with composer will show some deprecation warning, we will be working on that in the upcoming release.
Using the Archive Files
If you had downloaded the source files in an archive file (tar.gz) please download the current version of the archive from friendica-full-2021.09.tar.gz (sha256) and friendica-addons 2021.09.tar.gz (sha256) and unpack it on your local computer.As many files got deleted or moved around, please upload the unpacked files to a new directory on your server (say
friendica_new) and copy over your existing configuration (config/local.config.phpandconfig/addon.config.php) and.htaccessfiles. Afterwards rename your current Friendica directory (e.g. friendica) tofriendica_oldandfriendica_newtofriendica.The files of the dependencies are included in the archive (make sure you are using the friendica-full-2021.09 archive), so you don’t have to worry about them.
Post Update Tasks
The database update should be applied automatically, but sometimes it gets stuck. If you encounter this, please initiate the DB update manually from the command line by running the script
bin/console dbstructure update
from the base of your Friendica installation. If the output contains any error message, please let us know using the channels mentioned below.Please note, that some of the changes to the database structure will take some time to be applied, depending on the size of your Friendica database.
Known Issues
Update Mon Sept 27th: If you are using MySQL (not MariaDB) the automatic DB structure updates may fail see issue 10768.Update Mon Oct 4th / 7th: Solved for the full archive downloadable from files.friendi.ca. A node-specific
config/local.config.phpfile has been inadvertently included in the full archive. Please make sure you either remove it or overwrite it with your own when you perform the update as described above.How to Contribute
If you want to contribute to the project, you don’t need to have coding experience. There are a number of tasks listed in the issue tracker with the label “Junior Jobs” we think are good for new contributors. But you are by no means limited to these – if you find a solution to a problem (even a new one) please make a pull request at github or let us know in the development forum.Contribution to Friendica is also not limited to coding. Any contribution to the documentation, the translation or advertisement materials is welcome or reporting a problem. You don’t need to deal with Git(Hub) or Transifex if you don’t like to. Just get in touch with us and we will get the materials to the appropriate places.
Thanks everyone who helped making this release possible and have fun!
https://friendi.ca/2021/09/25/friendica-2021-09-released/
