I'm glad to announce the release of version 2.54 of #snac, the simple, minimalistic #ActivityPub instance server written in C. This release includes very valuable work by fellow developer louis77, as well as other bugfixes and improvements:

Markdown-style links are now supported.

The alt text in attachments that have one is also shown in a dropdown just below it (useful for environments where mouseover is not available, i.e. for phones and tablets).

Instance-wide notifications has been implemented (contributed by louis77). A small tweak to the default CSS was made to suit this change; please consider updating your style.css (see doc/style.css as an example).

The avatar and/or the header images can now be deleted (contributed by louis77).

Code cleaning: HTTP status codes use names instead of hardcoded integers (contributed by louis77).

Mastodon API: fixed login problems with the official Mastodon API, IceCube and Toot! on iOS, some fixes for Mona and Tokodon apps, user credentials can now be edited from apps (all contributed by louis77), fixed crash on unset content-type header.

The webfinger content-type response header is now RFC-compliant (contributed by steve-bate).

Improved support for the HTTP OPTIONS method, allowing sites like https://mastodonlistmanager.org to work.

Fixed non-working content warnings in the public instance timeline.

https://comam.es/what-is-snac

If you find #snac useful, please consider buying grunfink a coffee: https://ko-fi.com/grunfink

#snacAnnounces

Found 19 new servers and 19 servers died off since 3 hours ago.

23,853 servers checked. 13,882,640 Total Users with 1,674,170 Active Users today. Check out the stats!

New #fediverse servers found:

sumisky.xyz a #misskey server from Private
chaotic.fun a #mastodon server from Private
snowpiercer.co.uk a #gotosocial server from Germany
mirror-02.vidbin.org a #peertube server from United States
u-stella.net a #misskey server from Japan
mi-balloon.okin-jp.net a #misskey server from Private
mitra.0ut0f.space a #mitra server from The Netherlands
mobilizon.ouvre-boites.coop a #mobilizon server from Germany
outskirts.town a #iceshrimp.net server from United States
mastodon.personalspaceshow.lawyer a #mastodon server from Private
hades.is a #gotosocial server from United States
notes.memorabilium.net a #writefreely server from United States
g33ks.social a #bonfire server from France
mast.delayofgame.com a #mastodon server from United States
spellcaster.social a #mastodon server from Private
tpjapub.us a #snac server from Private
mast.evulid.cc a #mastodon server from Private
mastodon.robomwm.com a #mastodon server from Private
s.1a23.studio a #firefish server from Private

Help others find a home, send them to fediverse.observer

I'm glad to announce the release of version 2.44 of #snac, the simple, minimalistic #ActivityPub instance server written in C. It includes the following changes:

Fixed a nasty bug that caused the in-memory output queue to be corrupted under heavy traffic loads. This is a good reason to upgrade (thanks to Víctor Moral and Stefano Marinelli for helping me in fixing this).

Shared inboxes are now supported. This is not a user visible feature (hopefully, they will not feel any change), but it will significantly improve traffic for snac instances with many users and will open room for new features that are only feasible with these kind of input channels (this is not enabled by default; see snac(8)).

I've refactored all HTML code because it was somewhat of a mess; now it's much more maintainable (at least for me). I think I haven't broken anything.

Fixed crash in a special case of malformed query.

Mastodon API: some tweaks for better integration with more clients, and fixed a crash when processing boosts from kbin.

Fixed crash in the FastCGI code (thanks to Yonle for helping me debug this).

Added apache2 configuration information (contributed by Víctor Moral).

Added FreeBSD and NetBSD setup information and examples (contributed by draga79).

https://comam.es/what-is-snac

If you find #snac useful, please consider buying grunfink a coffee: https://ko-fi.com/grunfink

This release has been inspired by the album Until the Horses Come Home by #Undyed.

One year of #snac

If the source code version control history is to be trusted, I started developing snac (a simple, minimalistic #ActivityPub instance server written in C) exactly one year ago (Sept 19th).

It was not my first experience with ActivityPub: I had built a prototype version in Python some months before (hence the "2" in the snac2 repository name), and back in 2019 I made some partial implementation for an unrelated (and now forgotten) blog project, so the protocol was not totally new to me.

These are my thoughts about one year of development.

Why did I start it? Because I read somewhere about the (still baffling to me) humoungous requirements of a basic #Mastodon installation. I read a lot of people affirming that was the bare minimum: "it CAN'T be done with less resources". But I've always seen it as a glorified short message application and challenged myself to write a feature-complete #Fediverse instance with the following goals: keeping it small, simple, easily deployed, and lacking the bloat software tendencies of modern times.

Did it come out as expected? not totally sure, but probably yes. I even implemented more things that I originally planned (I initially said a big NO to myself regarding adding Mastodon API support, but finally did it and it works mostly well). The program is still somewhat small (a stripped binary of less that 300k probably counts). The no-database, no-cookies, no-javascript absolute rules still apply. I'm fine with the (opinionated) web UI that shows conversations as threaded trees instead of the plain, dull stream of posts that Mastodon or Twitter show. It cooperates pretty well with the always growing ecosystem of ActivityPub applications.

Was the time and effort worth it? On this, I'm not sure. I'm old and depressed and unemployed, so developing snac has kept my brain busy and entertained for a little while. But it has been more work that I expected: the ActivityPub specification is a bit diffuse in some areas, so every implementation does some things a bit different and many corner cases had to be implemented; some parts (specifically, the Mastodon API) have been very tedious to implement and test; and also, helping users debugging remote systems is difficult and very stressing for me. Fortunately, some fellow developers have helped me and I'm immensely thankful to them.

Has it been a success? I'm pretty sure about this: no. I thought that the small footprint, the lack of moving parts and the feature set would be attractive to a large base of users, but this has not been the case. Perhaps I've been unable to reach the neccessary potential users for it to reach some critical mass (a failure of the PR department 😆). Perhaps what I consider interesting features (minimalism, footprint, the web UI concept, Mastodon API compatibility, etc.) are not that valuable for most. Perhaps people disregard it just because it's not Mastodon. Perhaps there are errors and crashes that I'm not aware of. Perhaps snac is rubbish and I'm unable to see it. The reality is that snac is a niche and unknown part of the Fediverse ecosystem and there is no sign that the user base will grow from the current small fistful of deployments out there.

What about the future? I'm also not sure. Apart from some pending bugfixes and wishlist items mentioned in the TODO file, I've implemented all the features I initially expected and then many more, so I consider snac a finished program. New bugs will happen, that's for sure. New ActivityPub applications will show out there and, if experience tells me anything, they will all have slightly different protocol interpretations that will need some code tuning on my part. Development will continue; snac is a maintained program. But big changes will probably not happen anymore.

https://comam.es/what-is-snac

If you find snac useful, please consider buying grunfink a coffee: https://ko-fi.com/grunfink