Development in 2022

Hey everyone,

you have probably noticed that I didn’t provide the monthly updates about the GNUnet Messenger API since September. The reason for this is that my first goals completed and while I continued working on it, I contributed to other projects as well. So my time was limited.

For example I did a lot of refactoring source code in the VkCV Vulkan framework and recently pushed a new release with a lot of features for developing graphics and rendering applications. There’s now also a blog to learn developing first graphics applications with this framework to utilize Vulkan (a cross compatible API for GPU acceleration).

I’m currently one of the biggest contributors to this framework. So if anything might not work, feel free to contact me. Testing is very welcome and it’s fully open-source. That means contributions are welcome as well.

Next thing I’m always trying to improve if I find the time is Manuskript. It’s a great tool for writers but it needs some work cleaning up its code. Unfortunately that needs more time than I can afford but I’ve made quite some progress refactoring the code with a new branch recreating most of the UI in GTK (because Qt causes a lot of issues when theming is applied currently and I have much more experience in using GTK). But those efforts are not finished yet and there’s a lot of testing necessary. So it’s even likely I will publish a GTK test version next year in parallel to the current Qt version (which still gets a lot of contributions applied by others).

Then obviously I’m still working on the Messenger. That means I tried to rework the build system for it by using GNU Autotools across the different parts of the API, I adjusted the code to recent changes in GNUnet and I added a few features to the graphical client application. But more of that once it’s properly tested and released. Feel free to build it from source though for testing. I always push my progress upstream.

Also I’m still aware of the fact that the GNUnet Messenger can not truly used via internet between multiple networks separated by NATs. We (GNUnet developers) hope to address that in 2023. It would be pretty awesome if the service just works once a solution has been implemented. But I will definitely announce it when I think the applications are ready for users besides testing.

Another thing I tried to improve is a way to support my development. You can now send donations via Liberapay here. I tried to setup my biggest projects with own pages. So if there’s any donation to support efforts on a specific project, that can be more transparent by donating to this project. If there are other active contributors, I will add them as well to share of course and obviously if you want to support the GNUnet project as a whole, I recommend to use the official way, documented on the website.

Last thing I want to add is that even if I get donations for any project. I still can only do as much as I have time available for those projects. That is currently my free time because I like developing a lot. But I will still appreciate any amount.

Best regards, Jacki

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