Hey all,
Matrix 1.6 is out there! Like Matrix 1.5 back in November, this release is largely a maintenance update. Matrix 1.1 through 1.4 have been relatively major upgrades, so a little time between features doesn’t feel like a bad idea :)
As with all spec releases, we encourage implementations to gradually update over the next few months rather than have support for everything on release day - please be kind to the projects you use, and help them gain support if able.
Matrix 1.6 sees just 7 MSCs get merged, though this is to be expected from a maintenance release. Check out Matthew’s Matrix 2.0 talk at FOSDEM for an idea of what’s expected over the next few releases.
We’ve covered a couple of the MSCs below, but read on to the full changelog for the full picture.
It’s here! The time machine we’ve been waiting for!
Primarily part of the Gitter feature parity project (congratulations to the team going all-in on Matrix, by the way) to drive the Matrix Public Archive, the new API gives clients the ability to jump back in time to a nearby event. Being able to find something that was posted on a given day/week, but not being sure of which keywords to look for is a major usability improvement - many thanks to the Gitter team for making Matrix better!
Matrix is going voom
Synapse 1.76 enabled faster joins by default, and while there’s a lot of Python going into making joins as fast as possible, the specification side is a relatively small change at the moment: just don’t send as many events during joins (omit_members
).
There’s potentially more work on the horizon for making faster joins even faster and more robust, and some of that might involve spec work: keep an eye on Synapse releases and TWIM for updates as we make our way to faster joins in Matrix 2.0 :)
MSCs are how the spec changes in the way it does - adding, fixing, and maintaining features for the whole ecosystem to use. Check out the full changelog below, and the Spec Change Proposals page for more information on how these MSCs got merged (hint: they submitted a proposal, which anyone can do - take a look at the Matrix Live episode where Matthew covers the proposal process).
/rooms/<roomID>/timestamp_to_event
endpoint, as per MSC3030. (#1366)hkdf-hmac-sha256.v2
MAC method for SAS verification, as per MSC3783. (#1412)/context
always returns event
even if limit
is zero. Contributed by @sumnerevans at @beeper. (#1239)medium
. (#1417)/timestamp_to_event/<roomID>
endpoint, as per MSC3030. (#1366)/_matrix/federation/v2/send_join
to allow omitting membership events, per MSC3706. (#1393, #1398)/_matrix/federation/v2/send_join
should include heroes for nameless rooms, even when allowed to omit membership events, per MSC3943. (#1425)POST _matrix/federation/v1/user/keys/claim
response schema. (#1351)edu_type
in EDU examples. (#1383)No significant changes.
<content>
to content
in the OpenAPI files for content uploads. (#1370)