Sockethub 5.0.0 enters beta
Sockethub 5.0.0 has left alpha. The first beta, 5.0.0-beta.0, is available now:
npm install -g sockethub@next
Prereleases now publish under the next tag, for npm and for the container
image at ghcr.io/sockethub/sockethub:next. The old @alpha tag stays at the
last alpha and will not be updated again.
When we announced the alphas in January we said we'd post again once we reached beta. This is that post.
What beta means
The alpha series was about getting the architecture right: the package split, the move to Bun and BullMQ, and the canonical AS2.0 contexts. That work is done. Beta means the shape of 5.0 is settled.
- This is largely what 5.0 will be. The message envelope, the client API, the platform interface, and the published schemas are in their 5.0 form. Code written against the beta should carry over to the final release.
- It is already stable. The last stretch of alphas went into hardening rather than features, mostly IRC session and nick handling, CardDAV round-trip correctness, and safer outbound fetching. It has held up well in day-to-day use.
- It is not a complete feature freeze. We will still land additions that leave existing behaviour alone, and the newer platforms (CalDAV and CardDAV) will keep filling out.
- Breaking changes are the exception now. When one is unavoidable it is listed under Breaking Changes at the top of the release notes, as the IRC attendance change is in beta.0. If that section is empty, upgrading is safe.
New in beta.0
Beyond the fixes, a few things landed since the last alpha:
- The server serves an info page at its root and advertises its connection endpoints in the service descriptor, so clients can connect by discovery instead of a hardcoded URL.
- A
GET /healthendpoint for anyone running Sockethub behind a load balancer or orchestrator. - CalDAV reads published iCalendar feeds, and the CardDAV example now covers create, edit, delete, and list.
- IRC can list a server's channels, and answers attendance queries with a
single
membersmessage.
The full changelog has everything.
The road to 5.0
We expect a short beta series rather than another long one. Each beta will bundle the fixes that come out of real use, and 5.0.0 follows once those settle down. The most useful thing you can do is run the beta against your own IRC, XMPP, or DAV servers and tell us what breaks.
The documentation on this site tracks the beta: get started, platforms, and the client and server guides.