Welcome to the ownCloud development update from the second half of October! This overview is put together from activities on github, the mailing lists, blogs and whatever else is shared in the ownCloud community. Tips are welcome, ping Jos with your input!
The biggest items these two weeks were lots of low-level core improvements, a new sidebar in Core, lots of new features in the Android app, XMPP support in the Chat app and much activity on apps.owncloud.com! Interesting blogs and announcements include the debate around ownCloud in Ubuntu, ownCloud at LinuxCon and the announcement of ownCloud in Bountysource.
You can read a report on the first half of October here.
Core news
As always, we start with the development progress in core. There has been some low-level clean-up work and improvements as well as updates to 3rd-party functionality included in ownCloud and the usual fixes and features in various areas.
- Some cleanups took place, like handling of temporary files, only mounting user storage once, loading avatars in the header via PHP instead of using JS, removing an unreachable statement (found by a static code checker), cleaning up previews after a folder got deleted, there was a major cleanup of database handling which got merged and some functions were moved outside loops improving performance
- jknockaert initiated a long discussion when he proposed to rework the GetFileSize function – a very low-level piece of functionality which has now become more robust thanks to his efforts
- In third-party update news, pear/archive_tar was updated to 1.3.13, doctrine/dbal is now at 2.5, PHPass lost a file in C which wasn’t needed by ownCloud and caused security errors at some cloud providers and Patchwork/utf8 went to 1.1. New in ownCloud is punic 1.1.0.
- Unfortunately, a PR to update the Patchwork library got stuck after the initial contributor didn’t respond to a request. You can unstuck it, if you want!
- After bumping into a problem with returning errors from controllers, Raydiation got a neath solution merged – and a documentation PR is ready to go
- In strange-login-errors-news, this PR should make them disappear
- Thanks to localization now being based on punic the ownCloud language settings have become independent from the underlying OS
- After a healthy conversation, session handling was improved
- Apps now have the ability to gather performance diagnostics, helping sysadmins to improve ownCloud performance
- The updater had another small fix to improve its reliability, while also getting some style and code improvements
- New app settings were migrated to Appframework
- The sync client will benefit from the generation of stable etags for local files as this prevents unneeded re-downloading of files
- DB rollback functionality was added by danbartram
- On the way to security perfection, “Allow any outgoing XHR connections” was merged as temporary solution
Design
Some of the core improvements are design related, including these:
- The admin page now features a side-bar following a design discussion
- If you’re interested in how ownCloud deals with configuration vs smart defaults, this discussion and the linked issues are worth reading
- In small change – big effect news, the group admin label was renamed by sebomoto (who is new and received a warm welcome by other design team members)
- When autoconfig is used, no need to bother users with SQLite information!
If you want to get involved in ownCloud, check out our contribute page! If you are interested in design specifically, check out the design page on owncloud.org.
Apps
ownCloud heavily relies on apps for its functionality. The mobile and desktop sync apps bring your files to various devices and the server apps bring extensive functionality like chat, contacts, audio streaming or a password manager.
Mobile/desktop apps
- The android app received a contribution from magsjoq which makes it remember the last upload location from sharing (original PR). It even came with Swedish, English and Italian translations!
- A great contribution by tobiasKaminsky was merged here, bringing sorting of files to the Android app
- The android library now deals with secure ownCloud access over a proxy
- Users can now pick an instant upload path thanks to the work of loripino21 (coming in the next release, 1.6.2)
- The photo and other upload screens now feature a “select all” option thanks to grecep
- ogasser contributed code to the Android app which could handle ownCloud servers running on IDN (merged here)
- svkurowski contributed the ability to automatically change the icon color depending on the panel background to the desktop client (working only on Mac, for now)
Server app improvements
- The chat app added XMPP as second Chat backend, making it compatible with a wide array of chat applications
- The ownCloud Documents app migrated to AppFramework
- The user_CAS app got a series of improvements in a contribution from brenard
- In the contacts app, avatar handling was improved to not break things when avatars are disabled. The contact app now also correctly grabs images from vcards
- The gallery app had its javascript cleaned up
- Imprint was ported to ownCloud 7 by arkanscha
Activity in the ownCloud app store has been frantic:
- The oclife app, bringing tagging to ownCloud, received a major update, bringing compatibility for ownCloud 7, tag ownership and permissions, preview for images on the tag page, EXIF data tab on extended info and Spanish translations
- The user_sql app introduces a new Admin interface with the 0.9.1 release. This app allows authentication against an arbitrary SQL database, including sharing support between users in the DB
- An update to the storage charts app fixes some minor issues and introduces French translations
- The Shorty Tracking app was updated with ownCloud 7 support
- The standalone XMPP chat Jappix is new in the ownCloud App store
- The ownCloud ebook Reader app version 0.4.4 fixes some small issues
- The Tomboy sync server app 0.4.0 update introduces note preview, search, download, and shows custom icons, highlighting of current notebook and note modification display in the list
- The unix user backend updated to version 2.2 with a minor fix to the mail setting form
- And last but not least, the SMS app made it to version 1.3.0, introducing smarter phone number handling, ordering of conversations, automatic refreshing and desktop notifications
If you’re interested in working on or building ownCloud apps, see the documentation for server side apps. Desktop client fans can get started here and you can find the iOS developer documentation here and the Android documentation here. Both latter links also cover the iOS and Android libraries, important if you want to integrate ownCloud in your own application!
Community Conversations
On Planet ownCloud you can find blogs from ownCloud contributors and advocates. The last two weeks of October saw the following posts published:
- An explanation of the issues around ownCloud packages in Ubuntu
- How to un-stuck ownCloud when an upgrade breaks
- Video of the LinuxCon Europe ownCloud keynote and panel discussion are available
- Introducing Bountysource for ownCloud
- ownCloud was Awesome in Beijing
- The Development overview on the 2nd half of September became public
Please note that if you’re an ownCloud contributor, you should get your blog aggregated on owncloud.org/news! Ping Jos with your RSS feed.
The mailing lists featured some technical discussions, as well as the following calls for help and announcements:
- Bernhard Posselt called out for testing for the upcoming 4.0 release of the news app. The community update on the first half of November (coming soon!) will inform you about the new release
- October 22, ownCloud Desktop Client 1.6 was released with a number of bugfixes, while two days later 1.7 RC1 arrived. The final release is out now, see this blog for details!
- Alessandro did a call for help about adding ideas to the ownCloud GSOC page
- Jörn Friedrich Dreyer announced the formation of a new ‘search team’ in github for people interested in the search capabilities of ownCloud
- And Jos asked for people interested in helping out at an ownCloud booth at the South California Linux Fest
You can join the discussions on this page.
As always, we can only ever cover a small part of what is going on in ownCloud. If you want to follow things more closely, follow our twitter account, Facebook page or our G+ page. We are now also active again on Diaspora!
Events
Monday, we published a blog about ownCloud events. Find a calendar of ownCloud events on owncloud.org/events. If you would love to meet and discuss ownCloud with likeminded people but nothing is happening close by, consider organizing an ownCloud meetup! Check out this page on how to get started.
