This is going to be a small Dev Pulse; I’m just going to update you on the status of three branches of Holochain. If you’re a developer, I hope you’ll find this useful for planning out your upgrade path.

Don’t miss the bit at the bottom! A scaffolding template for generating React UIs has been contributed by a thoughtful member of our community!

Holochain 0.1.x series: Skip 0.1.4, wait for 0.1.5

In an update last week to Dev Pulse 133, I reported that there were some ‘slightly breaking’ changes which resulted in some issues that broke the Holonix dev environment. The dev team has reverted part of the change, which may still require a tiny bit of code refactoring in your validation functions but will repair the dev environment.

There are also some database schema changes in 0.1.4. They don’t affect hApp code, but people using 0.1.4 won’t be able to import their hApp data from 0.1.3 and earlier.

There is an upcoming version, 0.1.5, which will include the fix for the dev environment as well as a migration path for older database versions. There’s already a release candidate for 0.1.5 which contains some of the fixes; the final version will contain all of them. We recommend you wait until 0.1.5 is released before upgrading your hApp code and asking your users to upgrade their Launcher.

Holochain 0.2.x series: Gossip fix in the works, dev tooling expected for 0.2.1

So the big news last week is that we released Holochain 0.2.0 on schedule. This release series includes peer blocking and warrants, which form the foundation of Holochain’s immune system. It also comes with a raft of other updates, like a move to end-to-end-encrypted WebRTC for network communications.

But! While preparing the dev tooling, a gossip issue was discovered which is causing peers to become unable to communicate with each other. The core team is working on the fix for 0.2.1, after which the dev tooling (client libs, Tryorama, hc dev tool, Launcher, and Holonix dev environment) will be fully tested and released.

So we recommend you wait until then before updating your code for 0.2.x — and remember that you don’t have to if you don’t need the new features yet. Our six-month support promise for 0.1.x is still there.

When the dev tools are released, I’ll have a big Dev Pulse for you with all the release notes to help you update your code.

Holochain 0.3.x series: Moving right along

Although each point release comes with a feature freeze, the core dev team hasn’t stopped adding new ones. Holochain 0.3 and the accompanying dev tooling will include these new features:

  • A conductor can make multiple WebRTC signal server connections, for increased resilience and availability on local and global networks.
  • DHT storage arcs can be resized, to let resource-constrained devices throttle their resource contributions or let powerful devices take a larger share.
  • Zero-sized storage arcs don’t participate in gossip, to allow the most resource-constrained devices to opt out completely.
  • The Holonix dev environment can pull binaries from a trusted cache on the localnet.
  • Link retrieval can be batched, and just the count of links can be retrieved.
  • The HoloPort Alpha network will be used to scale-test Holochain with certain hApps.

Most of these features are in service of in-person hackathons, and more immediately, DWeb Camp’s Tomorrow event. On this last full day of the camp, the WiFi meshnet’s link to the global internet will be shut off. It’ll be an opportunity for all the participants to use the offline-friendly, local-first technology they’ve brought. Holochain’s offering (in addition to being a sponsor this year!) will be a hApp to help people organise and take notes for Open Space sessions. We intend it as a gift to the DWeb community in keeping with the spirit of cooperation that I found so beautiful when I attended last year.

You can read more about how Holochain plans to get involved this year in this recent article.

So… Do you want to be part of dogfooding a real hApp? Do you want to get acquainted with wonderful folks who are trying to use digital technology, so often a cause of degeneration, to birth something new and inspiring?

There are early bird discounts for families and teams, but they end next Monday, May 8th. We also have a 25% discount code you can use: FRIENDSANDFAMILY

We hope we get to meet you there, in Navarro, CA, US, from 21 to 25 June!

React template for scaffolding

Nick Stebbings, a developer in the community, has shared a React UI template for use in the hc scaffold command. You can use it by passing the GitHub URL and template name (there are two templates, app and module):

hc scaffold web-app \
    --templates-url https://github.com/nick-stebbings/holochain-react-scaffold-template \
    --template app \
    my-awesome-app

It’s pretty great to see contributions like this. It shows the dev community is growing (and generous), and it allows the dev community to grow even more by meeting UI devs where they’re at.

Cover photo by Stefano Lombardo on Unsplash

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