New Patchwork Release: v3.18.1-beta.4

I just hit publish on the Github release page and will now head to bed.

As this is a beta version, do make sure you have a backup of your secret file just in case. In fact, always have a backup of your secret file, beta or not. 😛

The big change for this pre-release is the version bump of electron from the v8.x.x series to v11.x.x. So give the whole thing a good spin.
The only real change for this change however are the context menus that appear when you right-click the different elements.
They changed slightly compared to the previous version, but all the functionality that was there should still be there, and then some.
Together with this come changes to the spell checking.
Let me know how it works, file issues or reach out on ssb @MRiJ+CvDnD9ZjqunY1oy6tsk0IdbMDC4Q3tTC8riS3s=.ed25519.

In terms of pre-built binaries, I added two Linux AppImage downloads: one for arm64 and one for armv7l. I think those should be the first functional arm builds of patchwork. If this pans out, I'd try to build for Windows too, and possibly the new Macs. I don't really have a way of testing that though, so if folks could build from source and could report, that'd be great. 🙂

Just to re-iterate what the plan here is: for now, there will only be one last proper Patchwork release.
There are other clients approaching "prime time" readiness, and all I intend to do here is to tide everyone over until those are a viable option for most folks. So don't expect many (or any!) new features from Patchwork in the future.
The reasoning behind this is mostly that the codebase of Patchwork is essentially unmaintainable, certainly for a small group of volunteers, and uses enough bespoke software throughout the application that growing the dev team is near-impossible too.
Newer clients like manyverse and Oasis make different choices here, and as a consequence are much more hackable. So have a look at these projects, they're doing great work!

Install

Use your favorite package manager or install manually.

Windows

Patchwork-Setup-3.18.1-beta.4.exe

macOS

Patchwork-3.18.1-beta.4.dmg

You must allow apps from "unidentified" developers.

Linux

Patchwork-3.18.1-beta.4.AppImage

You may need to fix the sandbox.

There are also releases for Debian and Snapcraft:

• Debian: ssb-patchwork_3.18.1-beta.4_amd64.deb
• Snapcraft: ssb-patchwork_3.18.1-beta.4_amd64.snap
  • You must install with snap install --dangerous because it's unsigned.

Getting started

If this is your first time on Scuttlebutt you may need an invite to get connected. After installing Patchwork and choosing your name you should select the Join Pub button. You'll need to get a pub invite, paste it into the prompt, and select Redeem invite.

You can find more information in the Getting Started Guide.

Changes

Support

:thinking: Any questions? Check out the Scuttlebutt FAQ!

Need help? Please create an issue!

I will give Oasis a go. Patchwork has been great.

Hmm. New version of Patchwork is behaving oddly. It’s “lost” my connections. It says I’m not following anybody (like on a clean install of a new identity)
Also, part of my profile is gone. Will give it more time to see what it does

Dammit I should have written this right away: there are a bunch of version bumps in this release, especially compared to v3.18.0, but even compared to the last beta.
Many of these will recompute indexes on the offset log, which will take a while, and during that time Patchwork will possibly look empty.
I wrote a post a while back explaining some of the mechanisms around indexing.

In particular for this beta I bumped...

• ssb-private from v.0.2.3 to v1.1.0
• ssb-friends from v4.1.4 to v4.3.0

Once these indexes are complete however, patchwork should be back to normal. You should have the progress bar at the top indicating the progress. If it does get stuck, please do tell, but this is a long-standing and hard to debug bug and actually one of the examples why patchwork won't be continued. A restart of patchwork often unblocks it.

@Erich Ernst Paul Honecker, 1994 and beyond give a sign of life when you're done? Depending on which version you're coming from, this one has a pretty high risk of getting stuck or such. 😕

The move to Beta 4 with AppImage on Manjaro Linux was flawless and is working fine.

Nice work. The arm64 AppImage works on my Pinebook.

I'm running it on macOS and I've noticed that threading is no longer working. Messages that I know belong to some thread are appearing as toplevel messages. Did anything changed related to that?

Ugh, no... do you have an example?

@Daan,

This screenshot shows a reply to a thread but there is no link to view the full thread. That is happening with other messages which are not even showing their root message, they're floating replies.

Seeing releases will be coming to and end I made a concerted effort to try #oasis out and sad to say I'm back with #patchwork as it pales in comparison to UI experience. The basis of my feeds is around subscribing to topcs/channels and there is no functionality yet for that on Oasis (but looks like it is coming soon). Maybe I'm too used to Patchwork, but it did make me realise how nicely Patchwork works.

But I do appreciate the technical challenge side of it and grateful it has been able to carry us so far. I'll carry on using it so long while I wait for the other desktop clients to mature further.

@Nude Ninja 🖥 yes, I managed to reproduce that and the lack of threading yesterday. Gotta put in some debugging work. Next weekend seems like a good time for that. :P