This Week in AOSC OS Development

It's been a busy week since we kicked off the Winter 2020 iteration. As time permits, we will be pushing weekly updates to the Stable branch, including security, bug-fix, patch-level version updates (e.g. 2.3.1 => 2.3.2), and major updates included as Exceptions.

Here below is a breakdown of what we've done this week.

Stable Branch Updates

Multiple security updates have now been made available for Stable branch users (AMD64-only for now, we are working to sync other architectures):

• Chromium (chromium) and Google Chrome (google-chrome) v79.0.3945.117 => v80.0.3987.87.
• cURL (curl, curl+32) v7.66.0 => 7.67.0.
• GNU Screen (screen) v4.7.0 => v4.7.0-1.
• OpenJDK and OpenJFX...
  • OpenJDK 8 (openjdk-8) v3:8u232+ga-1 => v3:8u242+ga-1.
  • OpenJFX 8 (openjfx-8) v8u202+ga-1.
  • OpenJDK 11 (openjdk) v3:11.0.5+ga => 3:11.0.6+ga.
  • OpenJFX 11 (openjfx) v11.0.3+1.
• Sudo (sudo) v1.8.29 => v1.8.31.

Desktop environments have also received updates and fixes:

• GNOME v3.34.0 => v3.34.1.
• Plasma Desktop v5.17.4 => v5.17.5.
• Default settings for various desktop environments are updated with new default wallpaper and themes. In particular, Plasma Desktop now uses a package (plasma-default-settings) to ship AOSC OS specific settings, and the AOSC OS logo in KInfoCenter has been replaced with an vector image to improve appearance in HiDPI set-ups.

Other notable updates:

• Linux Kernels...
  • Mainline (linux+kernel) v5.5.0 => v5.5.2.
  • Long-Term Support (linux+kernel+lts) v5.4.15 => v5.4.17.
• Node.js (nodejs) v2:12.14.0 => v2:12.14.1.
• Pale Moon Browser (palemoon) v28.8.0 => v28.8.2.2.
• Telegram Desktop (telegram-desktop) v1.9.3-2 => v1.9.9.
  • This version fixes the spellcheck function.
• Thunderbird (thunderbird) v68.4.1 => v68.4.2.
• You-Get (you-get) v0.4.1388 => v0.4.1403.
• Youtube-DL (youtube-dl) v2020.01.01 => 2020.01.24.

Looking Ahead

Major works are also done on the Testing-Proposed => Testing front, which will be made available by the end of April for Stable users. Across the tree, we have surveyed for non-encrypted (or non-secured) source links (ftp:// and http://) and attmpted to replace them all with HTTPS (https://). At present, we have detected over 1600 packages with non-encrypted source links, and replaced over 1200 of them with HTTPS, with 328 remaining (either not provided by the upstream, or new links would have to be detected).

Major desktop environment updates are packaged and pending for further testing:

• Cinnamon Desktop and Applications v4.2 => v4.4.
• MATE Desktop and Applications v1.20 => v1.22.
• Xfce and Applications v4.12 => v4.14.

Other notable updates:

• Brise, a dictionary for the RIME input method, has been deprecated and replaced with a new collection of RIME Dictionary Data (rime-data) as specified by its upstream.
• IPython Shell (ipython) v7.10.2 => v7.11.1.
• Visual Studio Code, or Code-OSS (vscode) v1.41.1 => v1.42.0.
• Wine (wine) v5.0 => v5.1.

In the coming week, we are expecting Plasma 5.18 to be released by the KDE Community. Currently, Plasma 5.18 Beta is already in the Testing-Proposed repository to prepare for the final release. We are expecting to complete building the 5.18.0 release in the coming week, and make it available for Testing branch users.

— Mingcong Bai