Note: This is a new thing I'm trying: write a monthly report of my contributions to Free Software. Let's see how long that lasts. (my bets are on doing it only this once)

Being unemployed, I've had a bit more time than usual to contribute to a few different projects. It also means I haven't worked at all on some dear project like I used to.

In a true "jack of all trade" fashion, I've done a bit of everything.

GNOME

• Fixed a bug in Evolution notifications

• Documented alt+esc in GNOME

• Reported a bug in the appstream-glib validator

• Reported a bug with GNOME Software removing GNOME Shell, which shouldn't ever happen

  I tested a quick fix for the specific issue which triggered this.

• Reported a privacy issue in GeoClue2

  This turned out to be a race condition in which Geoclue sometimes responds to client apps before the desktop registered its agent. When that happens, Geoclue uses its default configuration, which allows everything.

  Geoclue now requires an agent and will refuse access when the session doesn't run one, fixing the privacy issue. We've made the demo agent automatically installed and started on non-GNOME desktops, to avoid breaking them (only GNOME has their own agent).

  There is still a race condition to fix, though, in which the app could ask for authorization before the agent has registered, leading to the daemon refusing access when the agent configuration would have authorized it.

Flatpak

• Shrunk the Flatpak Freedesktop Platform 1.8 by a whopping 150MB

• Upgraded Blender and its dependencies in Flathub

• Reviewed and merged appdata improvements for Picard in Flathub

• Reported a crasher in Flatpak

• Updated appstream-glib in the Freedesktop Flatpak Sdk 1.6

  This contains bug fixes I need for the Blender and Dino Flatpak builds.

• Caught up the Freedesktop Sdk 1.8 with changes in version 1.6

• Reviewed and merged an appdata improvement for Blender in Flathub

  I mentored the contributor into using Git and Github for their first contribution to Free Software.

• Sent a Flatpak manifest for Dino

  This is still under review.

Cangjie

• Merged a patch from Koala and made the CI build on Fedora Rawhide

• Sent a pull request to clean up our data a bit

  I had actually started this in late February, early March, but only took the time to finish it this month.

  This is still under review, as we don't want to remove things without carefully considering the implications.

• Started thinking about a future data format and a libcangjie rewrite

Miscellaneous

• Published my first Rust crate

• Finished the Dino appdata

  I had some problems integrating it in GNOME Software, and investigating them led to a bug fix in appstream-glib.

• I also spent quite a lot of time working on a small CLI app in Rust, mostly as an exercise to learn Rust and Diesel. I will most likely publish it as free software eventually, but am not yet comfortable doing so at the moment.

If you like what I did and want me to continue, feel free to tip me at Liberapay. I don't particularly need the money so don't ruin yourself over it, but it will be good to know that my work was appreciated. 🙂