RC1 of NodeBB v4

I'm happy to announce RC1 (that's Release Candidate 1!!) of NodeBB v4. Since the last v4 pre-release (beta 4), we've made additional bug fixes and stability improvements.

Here is the list of new features and fixes since the first beta:

  • Emoji! :star2: :trumpet: :snake:
  • Ability to search for a user by their handle directly from the search bar
  • When encountering links to websites that advertise an ActivityPub alternate, NodeBB will try to load that site in NodeBB first
  • Categories now have their own avatars instead of serving the generic site brand icon
  • NodeBB will attempt to backfill an entire topic when encountering a new object, reducing the need to visit the original site to get the entire conversation. (This is contingent on the other server supporting resolvable context collections)
  • Chats are now federating out as limited-visibility posts on the fediverse
  • Improvements to the title generator
  • Custom Fields now two-way federating (custom fields are a feature new to the 3.x branch as well!)
  • Better compatibility with nodebb-plugin-feed

Timeline-wise this brings us close to the end of our funding from @nlnet@social.nlnet.nl for the 2024 calendar year. We've exceeded our own expectations of what we could do this year, and we've already applied for funding from NLNet again to really let NodeBB push the boundaries of what the ActivityPub protocol can do!

The RC signifies that the software has reached a (self-proclaimed) stable state, and broader usage is encouraged. If you have any questions, concerns, or trouble upgrading your existing NodeBB to v4, please call that out here for support.

There is now a soft feature freeze in place while we sort out the last remaining (hopefully none :hand_with_index_and_middle_fingers_crossed:) bugs, and we'll aim to launch v4 after that.

8 Likes

RC2 is out already, fixing a regression that caused remote deletions to not be carried out locally.

Yay for bugs! :bug:

Federation with Lemmy seems broken. I can view nodebb.org topics from lemmy.ca, but I can't view Lemmy posts from here. Additionally, only some of my comments from lemmy.ca seem to be landing on posts here, and local nodebb.org comments don't seem to be visible from lemmy.ca (I only see off-site comments).

@Kichae can you give me an example Lemmy post that didn't make it across? Was it a reply to this topic?

I left a reply on the 4.0 beta launch post that I'm unable to see here: https://lemmy.ca/post/29616839/13019946 As you'll see, the only comments from that thread that made it over to there are from off-site commenters as well.

I've also subscribed to several Lemmy communities here, and none of the posts from those communities are showing up in my World feed, or anywhere else. They appear empty when I navigate to them from my profile (also, the 'following' count on my profile reads 0, suggesting that it only counts on-site entities), e.g. https://community.nodebb.org/user/comicstrips@lemmy.world

Oh, weird. I also don't seem to be able to follow an of the openbeta topics. It finds them (e.g. openbeta@community.openbeta.io), and the UI indicates that I've successfully followed when I click the 'Follow' button, but it doesn't appear in the list of entities I'm following, and if I search for it again, it says I'm not following it.

Is that topic not federating? If not, why is it discoverable?

@Kichae That's interesting! I'll have to dig into it tomorrow and find out what's up with Lemmy integration. It was working fine in my limited testing (I follow a couple people posting on Lemmy) but it might be the reverse isn't working as intended.

I hadn't even considered trying to follow Lemmy users. Lemmy doesn't let you do that. I'll double check to see if that's working for me.

Another interesting discovery on that front, though: Searching for kichae@lemmy.ca returns my nodebb.org account, not my lemmy account. In fact, this appears to be so for any of my other fedi accounts, as I use the same username on all of them.

Nice. A lot of work being done here. Impressive release as usual.