synapse/CHANGES.md

Synapse 1.59.1 (2022-05-18)

This release fixes a long-standing issue which could prevent Synapse's user directory for updating properly.

Bugfixes

• Fix a long-standing bug where the user directory background process would fail to make forward progress if a user included a null codepoint in their display name or avatar. Contributed by Nick @ Beeper. (#12762)

Synapse 1.59.0 (2022-05-17)

Synapse 1.59 makes several changes that server administrators should be aware of:

• Device name lookup over federation is now disabled by default. (#12616)
• The synapse.app.appservice and synapse.app.user_dir worker application types are now deprecated. (#12452, #12654)

See the upgrade notes for more details.

Additionally, this release removes the non-standard m.login.jwt login type from Synapse. It can be replaced with org.matrix.login.jwt for identical behaviour. This is only used if jwt_config.enabled is set to true in the configuration. (#12597)

Bugfixes

• Fix DB performance regression introduced in Synapse 1.59.0rc2. (#12745)

Synapse 1.59.0rc2 (2022-05-16)

Note: this release candidate includes a performance regression which can cause database disruption. Other release candidates in the v1.59.0 series are not affected, and a fix will be included in the v1.59.0 final release.

Bugfixes

• Fix a bug introduced in Synapse 1.58.0 where /sync would fail if the most recent event in a room was rejected. (#12729)

Synapse 1.59.0rc1 (2022-05-10)

Features

• Support MSC3266 room summaries over federation. (#11507)
• Implement changes to MSC2285 (hidden read receipts). Contributed by @SimonBrandner. (#12168, #12635, #12636, #12670)
• Extend the module API to allow modules to change actions for existing push rules of local users. (#12406)
• Add the notify_appservices_from_worker configuration option (superseding notify_appservices) to allow a generic worker to be designated as the worker to send traffic to Application Services. (#12452)
• Add the update_user_directory_from_worker configuration option (superseding update_user_directory) to allow a generic worker to be designated as the worker to update the user directory. (#12654)
• Add new enable_registration_token_3pid_bypass configuration option to allow registrations via token as an alternative to verifying a 3pid. (#12526)
• Implement MSC3786: Add a default push rule to ignore m.room.server_acl events. (#12601)
• Add new mau_appservice_trial_days configuration option to specify a different trial period for users registered via an appservice. (#12619)

Bugfixes

• Fix a bug introduced in Synapse 1.48.0 where the latest thread reply provided failed to include the proper bundled aggregations. (#12273)
• Fix a bug introduced in Synapse 1.22.0 where attempting to send a large amount of read receipts to an application service all at once would result in duplicate content and abnormally high memory usage. Contributed by Brad & Nick @ Beeper. (#12544)
• Fix a bug introduced in Synapse 1.57.0 which could cause Failed to calculate hosts in room errors to be logged for outbound federation. (#12570)
• Fix a long-standing bug where status codes would almost always get logged as 200!, irrespective of the actual status code, when clients disconnect before a request has finished processing. (#12580)
• Fix race when persisting an event and deleting a room that could lead to outbound federation breaking. (#12594)
• Fix a bug introduced in Synapse 1.53.0 where bundled aggregations for annotations/edits were incorrectly calculated. (#12633)
• Fix a long-standing bug where rooms containing power levels with string values could not be upgraded. (#12657)
• Prevent memory leak from reoccurring when presence is disabled. (#12656)

Updates to the Docker image

• Explicitly opt-in to using BuildKit-specific features in the Dockerfile. This fixes issues with building images in some GitLab CI environments. (#12541)
• Update the "Build docker images" GitHub Actions workflow to use docker/metadata-action to generate docker image tags, instead of a custom shell script. Contributed by @henryclw. (#12573)

Improved Documentation

• Update SQL statements and replace use of old table user_stats_historical in docs for Synapse Admins. (#12536)
• Add missing linebreak to pipx install instructions. (#12579)
• Add information about the TCP replication module to docs. (#12621)
• Fixes to the formatting of README.rst. (#12627)
• Fix docs on how to run specific Complement tests using the complement.sh test runner. (#12664)

Deprecations and Removals

• Remove unstable identifiers from MSC3069. (#12596)
• Remove the unspecified m.login.jwt login type and the unstable uk.half-shot.msc2778.login.application_service from MSC2778. (#12597)
• Synapse now requires at least Python 3.7.1 (up from 3.7.0), for compatibility with the latest Twisted trunk. (#12613)

Internal Changes

• Use supervisord to supervise Postgres and Caddy in the Complement image to reduce restart time. (#12480)
• Immediately retry any requests that have backed off when a server comes back online. (#12500)
• Use make_awaitable instead of defer.succeed for return values of mocks in tests. (#12505)
• Consistently check if an object is a frozendict. (#12564)
• Protect module callbacks with read semantics against cancellation. (#12568)
• Improve comments and error messages around access tokens. (#12577)
• Improve docstrings for the receipts store. (#12581)
• Use constants for read-receipts in tests. (#12582)
• Log status code of cancelled requests as 499 and avoid logging stack traces for them. (#12587, #12663)
• Remove special-case for twisted logger from default log config. (#12589)
• Use getClientAddress instead of the deprecated getClientIP. (#12599)
• Add link to documentation in Grafana Dashboard. (#12602)
• Reduce log spam when running multiple event persisters. (#12610)
• Add extra debug logging to federation sender. (#12614)
• Prevent remote homeservers from requesting local user device names by default. (#12616)
• Add a consistency check on events which we read from the database. (#12620)
• Remove use of the constantly library and switch to enums for EventRedactBehaviour. Contributed by @andrewdoh. (#12624)
• Remove unused code related to receipts. (#12632)
• Minor improvements to the scripts for running Synapse in worker mode under Complement. (#12637)
• Move pympler back in to the all extras. (#12652)
• Fix spelling of M_UNRECOGNIZED in comments. (#12665)
• Release script: confirm the commit to be tagged before tagging. (#12556)
• Fix a typo in the announcement text generated by the Synapse release development script. (#12612)

Typechecking

• Fix scripts-dev to pass typechecking. (#12356)
• Add some type hints to datastore. (#12485)
• Remove unused # type: ignores. (#12531)
• Allow unused # type: ignore comments in bleeding edge CI jobs. (#12576)
• Remove redundant lines of config from mypy.ini. (#12608)
• Update to mypy 0.950. (#12650)
• Use Concatenate to better annotate _do_execute. (#12666)
• Use ParamSpec to refine type hints. (#12667)
• Fix mypy against latest pillow stubs. (#12671)

Synapse 1.58.1 (2022-05-05)

This patch release includes a fix to the Debian packages, installing the systemd and cache_memory extra package groups, which were incorrectly omitted in v1.58.0. This primarily prevented Synapse from starting when the systemd.journal.JournalHandler log handler was configured. See #12631 for further information.

Otherwise, no significant changes since 1.58.0.

Synapse 1.58.0 (2022-05-03)

As of this release, the groups/communities feature in Synapse is now disabled by default. See #11584 for details. As mentioned in the upgrade notes, this feature will be removed in Synapse 1.61.

No significant changes since 1.58.0rc2.

Synapse 1.58.0rc2 (2022-04-26)

This release candidate fixes bugs related to Synapse 1.58.0rc1's logic for handling device list updates.

Bugfixes

• Fix a bug introduced in Synapse 1.58.0rc1 where the main process could consume excessive amounts of CPU and memory while handling sentry logging failures. (#12554)
• Fix a bug introduced in Synapse 1.58.0rc1 where opentracing contexts were not correctly sent to whitelisted remote servers with device lists updates. (#12555)

Internal Changes

• Reduce unnecessary work when handling remote device list updates. (#12557)

Synapse 1.58.0rc1 (2022-04-26)

Features

• Implement MSC3383 for including the destination in server-to-server authentication headers. Contributed by @Bubu and @jcgruenhage for Famedly. (#11398)
• Docker images and Debian packages from matrix.org now contain a locked set of Python dependencies, greatly improving build reproducibility. (Board, #11537)
• Enable processing of device list updates asynchronously. (#12365, #12465)
• Implement MSC2815 to allow room moderators to view redacted event content. Contributed by @tulir @ Beeper. (#12427)
• Build Debian packages for Ubuntu 22.04 "Jammy Jellyfish". (#12543)

Bugfixes

• Prevent a sync request from removing a user's busy presence status. (#12213)
• Fix bug with incremental sync missing events when rejoining/backfilling. Contributed by Nick @ Beeper. (#12319)
• Fix a long-standing bug which incorrectly caused GET /_matrix/client/v3/rooms/{roomId}/event/{eventId} to return edited events rather than the original. (#12476)
• Fix a bug introduced in Synapse 1.27.0 where the admin API for deleting forward extremities would always return a count of 1, no matter how many extremities were deleted. (#12496)
• Fix a long-standing bug where the image thumbnails embedded into email notifications were broken. (#12510)
• Fix a bug in the implementation of MSC3202 where Synapse would use the field name device_unused_fallback_keys, rather than device_unused_fallback_key_types. (#12520)
• Fix a bug introduced in Synapse 0.99.3 which could cause Synapse to consume large amounts of RAM when back-paginating in a large room. (#12522)

Improved Documentation

• Fix rendering of the documentation site when using the 'print' feature. (#12340)
• Add a manual documenting config file options. (#12368, #12527)
• Update documentation to reflect that both the run_background_tasks_on option and the options for moving stream writers off of the main process are no longer experimental. (#12451)
• Update worker documentation and replace old federation_reader with generic_worker. (#12457)
• Strongly recommend Poetry for development. (#12475)
• Add some example configurations for workers and update architectural diagram. (#12492)
• Fix a broken link in README.rst. (#12495)
• Add HAProxy delegation example with CORS headers to docs. (#12501)
• Remove extraneous comma in User Admin API's device deletion section so that the example JSON is actually valid and works. Contributed by @olmari. (#12533)

Deprecations and Removals

• The groups/communities feature in Synapse is now disabled by default. (#12344)
• Remove unstable identifiers from MSC3440. (#12382)

Internal Changes

• Preparation for faster-room-join work: start a background process to resynchronise the room state after a room join. (#12394)
• Preparation for faster-room-join work: Implement a tracking mechanism to allow functions to wait for full room state to arrive. (#12399)
• Remove an unstable identifier from MSC3083. (#12395)
• Run CI in the locked Poetry environment, and remove corresponding tox jobs. (#12425, #12434, #12438, #12441, #12449, #12478, #12514, #12472)
• Change Mutual Rooms' unstable_features flag to uk.half-shot.msc2666.mutual_rooms which matches the current iteration of MSC2666. (#12445)
• Fix typo in the release script help string. (#12450)
• Fix a minor typo in the Debian changelogs generated by the release script. (#12497)
• Reintroduce the list of targets to the linter script, to avoid linting unwanted local-only directories during development. (#12455)
• Limit length of device_id to less than 512 characters. (#12454)
• Dockerfile-workers: reduce the amount we install in the image. (#12464)
• Dockerfile-workers: give the master its own log config. (#12466)
• complement-synapse-workers: factor out separate entry point script. (#12467)
• Back out experimental implementation of MSC2314. (#12474)
• Fix grammatical error in federation error response when the room version of a room is unknown. (#12483)
• Remove unnecessary configuration overrides in tests. (#12511)
• Refactor the relations code for clarity. (#12519)
• Add type hints so docker and stubs directories pass mypy --disallow-untyped-defs. (#12528)
• Update delay_cancellation to accept any awaitable, rather than just Deferreds. (#12468)
• Handle cancellation in EventsWorkerStore._get_events_from_cache_or_db. (#12529)

Synapse 1.57.1 (2022-04-20)

This is a patch release that only affects the Docker image. It is only of interest to administrators using the LDAP module to authenticate their users. If you have already upgraded to Synapse 1.57.0 without problem, then you have no need to upgrade to this patch release.

Updates to the Docker image

• Include version 0.2.0 of the Synapse LDAP Auth Provider module in the Docker image. This matches the version that was present in the Docker image for Synapse v1.56.0. (#12512)

Synapse 1.57.0 (2022-04-19)

This version includes a change to the way transaction IDs are managed for application services. If your deployment uses a dedicated worker for application service traffic, it must be stopped when the database is upgraded (which normally happens when the main process is upgraded), to ensure the change is made safely without any risk of reusing transaction IDs.

See the upgrade notes for more details.

No significant changes since 1.57.0rc1.

Synapse 1.57.0rc1 (2022-04-12)

Features

• Send device list changes to application services as specified by MSC3202, using unstable prefixes. The msc3202_transaction_extensions experimental homeserver config option must be enabled and org.matrix.msc3202: true must be present in the application service registration file for device list changes to be sent. The "left" field is currently always empty. (#11881)
• Optimise fetching large quantities of missing room state over federation. (#12040)
• Offload the update_client_ip background job from the main process to the background worker, when using Redis-based replication. (#12251)
• Move update_client_ip background job from the main process to the background worker. (#12252)
• Add a module callback to react to new 3PID (email address, phone number) associations. (#12302)
• Add a configuration option to remove a specific set of rooms from sync responses. (#12310)
• Add a module callback to react to account data changes. (#12327)
• Allow setting user admin status using the module API. Contributed by Famedly. (#12341)
• Reduce overhead of restarting synchrotrons. (#12367, #12372)
• Update /messages to use historic pagination tokens if no from query parameter is given. (#12370)
• Add a module API for reading and writing global account data. (#12391)
• Support the stable v1 endpoint for /relations, per MSC2675. (#12403)
• Include bundled aggregations in search results (MSC3666). (#12436)

Bugfixes

• Fix a long-standing bug where updates to the server notices user profile (display name/avatar URL) in the configuration would not be applied to pre-existing rooms. Contributed by Jorge Florian. (#12115)
• Fix a long-standing bug where events from ignored users were still considered for bundled aggregations. (#12235, #12338)
• Fix non-member state events not resolving for historical events when used in MSC2716 /batch_send state_events_at_start. (#12329)
• Fix a long-standing bug affecting URL previews that would generate a 500 response instead of a 403 if the previewed URL includes a port that isn't allowed by the relevant blacklist. (#12333)
• Default to private room visibility rather than public when a client does not specify one, according to spec. (#12350)
• Fix a spec compliance issue where requests to the /publicRooms federation API would specify limit as a string. (#12364, #12410)
• Fix a bug introduced in Synapse 1.49.0 which caused the synapse_event_persisted_position metric to have invalid values. (#12390)

Updates to the Docker image

• Bundle locked versions of dependencies into the Docker image. (#12385, #12439)
• Fix up healthcheck generation for workers docker image. (#12405)

Improved Documentation

• Clarify documentation for running SyTest against Synapse, including use of Postgres and worker mode. (#12271)
• Document the behaviour of LoggingTransaction.call_after and LoggingTransaction.call_on_exception methods when transactions are retried. (#12315)
• Update dead links in check-newsfragment.sh to point to the correct documentation URL. (#12331)
• Upgrade the version of mdbook in CI to 0.4.17. (#12339)
• Updates to the Room DAG concepts development document to clarify that we mark events as outliers because we don't have any state for them. (#12345)
• Update the link to Redis pub/sub documentation in the workers documentation. (#12369)
• Remove documentation for converting a legacy structured logging configuration to the new format. (#12392)

Deprecations and Removals

• Remove the unused and unstable /aggregations endpoint which was removed from MSC2675. (#12293)

Internal Changes

• Remove lingering unstable references to MSC2403 (knocking). (#12165)
• Avoid trying to calculate the state at outlier events. (#12191, #12316, #12330, #12332, #12409)
• Omit sending "offline" presence updates to application services after they are initially configured. (#12193)
• Switch to using a sequence to generate AS transaction IDs. Contributed by Nick @ Beeper. If running synapse with a dedicated appservice worker, this MUST be stopped before upgrading the main process and database. (#12209)
• Add missing type hints for storage. (#12267)
• Add missing type definitions for scripts in docker folder. Contributed by Jorge Florian. (#12280)
• Move MSC2654 support behind an experimental configuration flag. (#12295)
• Update docstrings to explain how to decipher live and historic pagination tokens. (#12317)
• Add ground work for speeding up device list updates for users in large numbers of rooms. (#12321)
• Fix typechecker problems exposed by signedjson 1.1.2. (#12326)
• Remove the tox packaging job: it will be redundant once #11537 lands. (#12334)
• Ignore .envrc for direnv users. (#12335)
• Remove the (broadly unused, dev-only) dockerfile for pg tests. (#12336)
• Remove redundant get_success calls in test code. (#12346)
• Add type annotations for tests/unittest.py. (#12347)
• Move single-use methods out of TestCase. (#12348)
• Remove broken and unused development scripts. (#12349, #12351, #12355)
• Convert Linearizer tests from inlineCallbacks to async. (#12353)
• Update docstrings for ReadWriteLock tests. (#12354)
• Refactor Linearizer, convert methods to async and use an async context manager. (#12357)
• Fix a long-standing bug where Linearizers could get stuck if a cancellation were to happen at the wrong time. (#12358)
• Make StreamToken.from_string and RoomStreamToken.parse propagate cancellations instead of replacing them with SynapseErrors. (#12366)
• Add type hints to tests files. (#12371)
• Allow specifying the Postgres database's port when running unit tests with Postgres. (#12376)
• Remove temporary pin of signedjson<=1.1.1 that was added in Synapse 1.56.0. (#12379)
• Add opentracing spans to calls to external cache. (#12380)
• Lay groundwork for using poetry to manage Synapse's dependencies. (#12381, #12407, #12412, #12418)
• Make missing importlib_metadata dependency explicit. (#12384, #12400)
• Update type annotations for compatiblity with prometheus_client 0.14. (#12389)
• Remove support for the unstable identifiers specified in MSC3288. (#12398)
• Add missing type hints to configuration classes. (#12402)
• Add files used to build the Docker image used for complement testing into the Synapse repository. (#12404)
• Do not include groups in the sync response when disabled. (#12408)
• Improve type hints related to HTTP query parameters. (#12415)
• Stop maintaining a list of lint targets. (#12420)
• Make synapse._scripts pass type checks. (#12421, #12422)
• Add some type hints to datastore. (#12423)
• Enable certificate checking during complement tests. (#12435)
• Explicitly specify the tls extra for Twisted dependency. (#12444)

Synapse 1.56.0 (2022-04-05)

Synapse will now refuse to start up if open registration is enabled, in order to help mitigate abuse across the federation. If you would like to provide registration to anyone, consider adding email, recaptcha or token-based verification in order to prevent automated registration from bad actors. This check can be disabled by setting the enable_registration_without_verification option in your homeserver configuration file to true. More details are available in the upgrade notes.

Synapse will additionally now refuse to start when using PostgreSQL with a non-C values for COLLATE and CTYPE, unless the config flag allow_unsafe_locale, found in the database section of the configuration file, is set to true. See the upgrade notes for details.

Internal Changes

• Bump the version of black for compatibility with the latest click release. (#12320)

Synapse 1.56.0rc1 (2022-03-29)

Features

• Allow modules to store already existing 3PID associations. (#12195)
• Allow registering server administrators using the module API. Contributed by Famedly. (#12250)

Bugfixes

• Fix a long-standing bug which caused the /_matrix/federation/v1/state and /_matrix/federation/v1/state_ids endpoints to return incorrect or invalid data when called for an event which we have stored as an "outlier". (#12087)
• Fix a long-standing bug where events from ignored users would still be considered for relations. (#12227, #12232, #12285)
• Fix a bug introduced in Synapse 1.53.0 where an unnecessary query could be performed when fetching bundled aggregations for threads. (#12228)
• Fix a bug introduced in Synapse 1.52.0 where admins could not deactivate and GDPR-erase a user if Synapse was configured with limits on avatars. (#12261)

Improved Documentation

• Fix the link to the module documentation in the legacy spam checker warning message. (#12231)
• Remove incorrect prefixes in the worker documentation for some endpoints. (#12243)
• Correct check_username_for_spam annotations and docs. (#12246)
• Correct Authentik OpenID typo, and add notes on troubleshooting. Contributed by @IronTooch. (#12275)
• HAProxy reverse proxy guide update to stop sending IPv4-mapped address to homeserver. Contributed by @villepeh. (#12279)

Internal Changes

• Rename shared_rooms to mutual_rooms (MSC2666), as per proposal changes. (#12036)
• Remove check on update_user_directory for shared rooms handler (MSC2666), and update/expand documentation. (#12038)
• Refactor create_new_client_event to use a new parameter, state_event_ids, which accurately describes the usage with MSC2716 instead of abusing auth_event_ids. (#12083, #12304)
• Refuse to start if registration is enabled without email, captcha, or token-based verification unless the new config flag enable_registration_without_verification is set to true. (#12091, #12322)
• Add tests for database transaction callbacks. (#12198)
• Handle cancellation in DatabasePool.runInteraction. (#12199)
• Add missing type hints for cache storage. (#12216)
• Add missing type hints for storage. (#12248, #12255)
• Add type hints to tests files. (#12224, #12240, #12256)
• Use type stubs for psycopg2. (#12269)
• Improve type annotations for execute_values. (#12311)
• Clean-up logic around rebasing URLs for URL image previews. (#12219)
• Use the ignored_users table in additional places instead of re-parsing the account data. (#12225)
• Refactor the relations endpoints to add a RelationsHandler. (#12237)
• Generate announcement links in the release script. (#12242)
• Improve error message when dependencies check finds a broken installation. (#12244)
• Compress metrics HTTP resource when enabled. Contributed by Nick @ Beeper. (#12258)
• Refuse to start if the PostgreSQL database has a non-C locale, unless the config flag allow_unsafe_db_locale is set to true. (#12262, #12288)
• Optionally include account validity expiration information to experimental MSC3720 account status responses. (#12266)
• Add a new cache _get_membership_from_event_id to speed up push rule calculations in large rooms. (#12272)
• Re-enable Complement concurrency in CI. (#12283)
• Remove unused test utilities. (#12291)
• Enhance logging for inbound federation events. (#12301)
• Fix compatibility with the recently-released Jinja 3.1. (#12313)
• Avoid trying to calculate the state at outlier events. (#12314)

Synapse 1.55.2 (2022-03-24)

This patch version reverts the earlier fixes from Synapse 1.55.1, which could cause problems in certain deployments, and instead adds a cap to the version of Jinja to be installed. Again, this is to fix an incompatibility with version 3.1.0 of the Jinja library, and again, deployments of Synapse using the matrixdotorg/synapse Docker image or Debian packages from packages.matrix.org are not affected.

Internal Changes

• Pin Jinja to <3.1.0, as Synapse fails to start with Jinja 3.1.0. (#12297)
• Revert changes from 1.55.1 as they caused problems with older versions of Jinja (#12296)

Synapse 1.55.1 (2022-03-24)

This is a patch release that fixes an incompatibility with version 3.1.0 of the Jinja library, released on March 24th, 2022. Deployments of Synapse using the matrixdotorg/synapse Docker image or Debian packages from packages.matrix.org are not affected.

Internal Changes

• Remove uses of the long-deprecated jinja2.Markup which would prevent Synapse from starting with Jinja 3.1.0 or above installed. (#12289)

Synapse 1.55.0 (2022-03-22)

This release removes a workaround introduced in Synapse 1.50.0 for Mjolnir compatibility. This breaks compatibility with Mjolnir 1.3.1 and earlier. (#11700); Mjolnir users should upgrade Mjolnir before upgrading Synapse to this version.

This release also moves the location of the synctl script; see the upgrade notes for more details.

Internal Changes

• Tweak copy for default Single Sign-On account details template to better adhere to mobile app store guidelines. (#12265, #12260)

Synapse 1.55.0rc1 (2022-03-15)

Features

• Add third-party rules callbacks check_can_shutdown_room and check_can_deactivate_user. (#12028)
• Improve performance of logging in for large accounts. (#12132)
• Add experimental env var SYNAPSE_ASYNC_IO_REACTOR that causes Synapse to use the asyncio reactor for Twisted. (#12135)
• Support the stable identifiers from MSC3440: threads. (#12151)
• Add a new Jinja2 template filter to extract the local part of an email address. (#12212)

Bugfixes

• Use the proper serialization format for bundled thread aggregations. The bug has existed since Synapse v1.48.0. (#12090)
• Fix a long-standing bug when redacting events with relations. (#12113, #12121, #12130, #12189)
• Fix a bug introduced in Synapse 1.7.2 whereby background updates are never run with the default background batch size. (#12157)
• Fix a bug where non-standard information was returned from the /hierarchy API. Introduced in Synapse v1.41.0. (#12175)
• Fix a bug introduced in Synapse 1.54.0 that broke background updates on sqlite homeservers while search was disabled. (#12215)
• Fix a long-standing bug when a filter argument with event_fields which did not include the unsigned field could result in a 500 error on /sync. (#12234)

Improved Documentation

• Fix complexity checking config example in Resource Constrained Devices docs page. (#11998)
• Improve documentation for demo scripts. (#12143)
• Updates to the Room DAG concepts development document. (#12179)
• Document that the typing, to_device, account_data, receipts, and presence stream writer can only be used on a single worker. (#12196)
• Document that contributors can sign off privately by email. (#12204)

Deprecations and Removals

• Remove workaround introduced in Synapse 1.50.0 for Mjolnir compatibility. Breaks compatibility with Mjolnir 1.3.1 and earlier. (#11700)
• **synctl has been moved into into synapse._scripts and is exposed as an entry point; see upgrade notes. (#12140)
• Remove backwards compatibilty with pagination tokens from the /relations and /aggregations endpoints generated from Synapse < v1.52.0. (#12138)
• The groups/communities feature in Synapse has been deprecated. (#12200)

Internal Changes

• Simplify the ApplicationService class' set of public methods related to interest checking. (#11915)
• Add config settings for background update parameters. (#11980)
• Correct type hints for txredis. (#12042)
• Limit the size of aggregation_key on annotations. (#12101)
• Add type hints to tests files. (#12108, #12146, #12207, #12208)
• Move scripts to Synapse package and expose as setuptools entry points. (#12118)
• Add support for cancellation to ReadWriteLock. (#12120)
• Fix data validation to compare to lists, not sequences. (#12128)
• Fix CI not attaching source distributions and wheels to the GitHub releases. (#12131)
• Remove unused mocks from test_typing. (#12136)
• Give scripts-dev scripts suffixes for neater CI config. (#12137)
• Move the snapcraft configuration file to contrib. (#12142)
• Enable MSC3030 Complement tests in CI. (#12144)
• Enable MSC2716 Complement tests in CI. (#12145)
• Add test for ObservableDeferred's cancellation behaviour. (#12149)
• Use ParamSpec in type hints for synapse.logging.context. (#12150)
• Prune unused jobs from tox config. (#12152)
• Move CI checks out of tox, to facilitate a move to using poetry. (#12153)
• Avoid generating state groups for local out-of-band leaves. (#12154)
• Avoid trying to calculate the state at outlier events. (#12155, #12173, #12202)
• Fix some type annotations. (#12156)
• Add type hints for ObservableDeferred attributes. (#12159)
• Use a prebuilt Action for the tests-done CI job. (#12161)
• Reduce number of DB queries made during processing of /sync. (#12163)
• Add delay_cancellation utility function, which behaves like stop_cancellation but waits until the original Deferred resolves before raising a CancelledError. (#12180)
• Retry HTTP replication failures, this should prevent 502's when restarting stateful workers (main, event persisters, stream writers). Contributed by Nick @ Beeper. (#12182)
• Add cancellation support to @cached and @cachedList decorators. (#12183)
• Remove unused variables. (#12187)
• Add combined test for HTTP pusher and push rule. Contributed by Nick @ Beeper. (#12188)
• Rename HomeServer.get_tcp_replication to get_replication_command_handler. (#12192)
• Remove some dead code. (#12197)
• Fix a misleading comment in the function check_event_for_spam. (#12203)
• Remove unnecessary pass statements. (#12206)
• Update the SSO username picker template to comply with SIWA guidelines. (#12210)
• Improve code documentation for the typing stream over replication. (#12211)

Synapse 1.54.0 (2022-03-08)

Please note that this will be the last release of Synapse that is compatible with Mjolnir 1.3.1 and earlier. Administrators of servers which have the Mjolnir module installed are advised to upgrade Mjolnir to version 1.3.2 or later.

Bugfixes

• Fix a bug introduced in Synapse 1.54.0rc1 preventing the new module callbacks introduced in this release from being registered by modules. (#12141)
• Fix a bug introduced in Synapse 1.54.0rc1 where runtime dependency version checks would mistakenly check development dependencies if they were present and would not accept pre-release versions of dependencies. (#12129, #12177)

Internal Changes

• Update release script to insert the previous version when writing "No significant changes" line in the changelog. (#12127)
• Relax the version guard for "packaging" added in #12088. (#12166)

Synapse 1.54.0rc1 (2022-03-02)

Features

• Add support for MSC3202: sending one-time key counts and fallback key usage states to Application Services. (#11617)
• Improve the generated URL previews for some web pages. Contributed by @AndrewRyanChama. (#11985)
• Track cache invalidations in Prometheus metrics, as already happens for cache eviction based on size or time. (#12000)
• Implement experimental support for MSC3720 (account status endpoints). (#12001, #12067)
• Enable modules to set a custom display name when registering a user. (#12009)
• Advertise Matrix 1.1 and 1.2 support on /_matrix/client/versions. (#12020, (#12022)
• Support only the stable identifier for MSC3069's is_guest on /_matrix/client/v3/account/whoami. (#12021)
• Use room version 9 as the default room version (per MSC3589). (#12058)
• Add module callbacks to react to user deactivation status changes (i.e. deactivations and reactivations) and profile updates. (#12062)

Bugfixes

• Fix a bug introduced in Synapse 1.48.0 where an edit of the latest event in a thread would not be properly applied to the thread summary. (#11992)
• Fix long-standing bug where the get_rooms_for_user cache was not correctly invalidated for remote users when the server left a room. (#11999)
• Fix a 500 error with Postgres when looking backwards with the MSC3030 /timestamp_to_event?dir=b endpoint. (#12024)
• Properly fix a long-standing bug where wrong data could be inserted into the event_search table when using SQLite. This could block running synapse_port_db with an argument of type 'int' is not iterable error. This bug was partially fixed by a change in Synapse 1.44.0. (#12037)
• Fix slow performance of /logout in some cases where refresh tokens are in use. The slowness existed since the initial implementation of refresh tokens in version 1.38.0. (#12056)
• Fix a long-standing bug where Synapse would make additional failing requests over federation for missing data. (#12077)
• Fix occasional Unhandled error in Deferred error message. (#12089)
• Fix a bug introduced in Synapse 1.51.0 where incoming federation transactions containing at least one EDU would be dropped if debug logging was enabled for synapse.8631_debug. (#12098)
• Fix a long-standing bug which could cause push notifications to malfunction if use_frozen_dicts was set in the configuration. (#12100)
• Fix an extremely rare, long-standing bug in ReadWriteLock that would cause an error when a newly unblocked writer completes instantly. (#12105)
• Make a POST to /rooms/<room_id>/receipt/m.read/<event_id> only trigger a push notification if the count of unread messages is different to the one in the last successfully sent push. This reduces server load and load on the receiving device. (#11835)

Updates to the Docker image

• The Docker image no longer automatically creates a temporary volume at /data. This is not expected to affect normal usage. (#11997)
• Use Python 3.9 in Docker images by default. (#12112)

Improved Documentation

• Document support for the to_device, account_data, receipts, and presence stream writers for workers. (#11599)
• Explain the meaning of spam checker callbacks' return values. (#12003)
• Clarify information about external Identity Provider IDs. (#12004)

Deprecations and Removals

• Deprecate using synctl with the config option synctl_cache_factor and print a warning if a user still uses this option. (#11865)
• Remove support for the legacy structured logging configuration (please see the the upgrade notes if you are using structured: true in the Synapse configuration). (#12008)
• Drop support for MSC3283 unstable flags now that the stable flags are supported. (#12018)
• Remove the unstable /spaces endpoint from MSC2946. (#12073)

Internal Changes

• Make the get_room_version method use get_room_version_id to benefit from caching. (#11808)
• Remove unnecessary condition on knock -> leave auth rule check. (#11900)
• Add tests for device list changes between local users. (#11972)
• Optimise calculating device_list changes in /sync. (#11974)
• Add missing type hints to storage classes. (#11984)
• Refactor the search code for improved readability. (#11991)
• Move common deduplication code down into _auth_and_persist_outliers. (#11994)
• Limit concurrent joins from applications services. (#11996)
• Preparation for faster-room-join work: when parsing the send_join response, get the m.room.create event from state, not auth_chain. (#12005, #12039)
• Preparation for faster-room-join work: parse MSC3706 fields in send_join response. (#12011)
• Preparation for faster-room-join work: persist information on which events and rooms have partial state to the database. (#12012)
• Preparation for faster-room-join work: Support for calling /federation/v1/state on a remote server. (#12013)
• Configure tox to use venv rather than virtualenv. (#12015)
• Fix bug in StateFilter.return_expanded() and add some tests. (#12016)
• Use Matrix v1.1 endpoints (/_matrix/client/v3/auth/...) in fallback auth HTML forms. (#12019)
• Update the olddeps CI job to use an old version of markupsafe. (#12025)
• Upgrade Mypy to version 0.931. (#12030)
• Remove legacy HomeServer.get_datastore(). (#12031, #12070)
• Minor typing fixes. (#12034, #12069)
• After joining a room, create a dedicated logcontext to process the queued events. (#12041)
• Tidy up GitHub Actions config which builds distributions for PyPI. (#12051)
• Move configuration out of setup.cfg. (#12052, #12059)
• Fix error message when a worker process fails to talk to another worker process. (#12060)
• Fix using the complement.sh script without specifying a directory or a branch. Contributed by Nico on behalf of Famedly. (#12063)
• Add type hints to tests/rest/client. (#12066, #12072, #12084, #12094)
• Add some logging to /sync to try and track down #11916. (#12068)
• Inspect application dependencies using importlib.metadata or its backport. (#12088)
• Use assertEqual instead of the deprecated assertEquals in test code. (#12092)
• Move experimental support for MSC3440 to /versions. (#12099)
• Add stop_cancellation utility function to stop Deferreds from being cancelled. (#12106)
• Improve exception handling for concurrent execution. (#12109)
• Advertise support for Python 3.10 in packaging files. (#12111)
• Move CI checks out of tox, to facilitate a move to using poetry. (#12119)

Synapse 1.53.0 (2022-02-22)

No significant changes since 1.53.0rc1.

Synapse 1.53.0rc1 (2022-02-15)

Features

• Add experimental support for sending to-device messages to application services, as specified by MSC2409. (#11215, #11966)
• Add a background database update to purge account data for deactivated users. (#11655)
• Experimental support for MSC3666: including bundled aggregations in server side search results. (#11837)
• Enable cache time-based expiry by default. The expiry_time config flag has been superseded by expire_caches and cache_entry_ttl. (#11849)
• Add a callback to allow modules to allow or forbid a 3PID (email address, phone number) from being associated to a local account. (#11854)
• Stabilize support and remove unstable endpoints for MSC3231. Clients must switch to the stable identifier and endpoint. See the upgrade notes for more information. (#11867)
• Allow modules to retrieve the current instance's server name and worker name. (#11868)
• Use a dedicated configurable rate limiter for 3PID invites. (#11892)
• Support the stable API endpoint for MSC3283: new settings in /capabilities endpoint. (#11933, #11989)
• Support the dir parameter on the /relations endpoint, per MSC3715. (#11941)
• Experimental implementation of MSC3706: extensions to /send_join to support reduced response size. (#11967)

Bugfixes

• Fix MSC2716 historical messages backfilling in random order on remote homeservers. (#11114)
• Fix a bug introduced in Synapse 1.51.0 where incoming federation transactions containing at least one EDU would be dropped if debug logging was enabled for synapse.8631_debug. (#11890)
• Fix a long-standing bug where some unknown endpoints would return HTML error pages instead of JSON M_UNRECOGNIZED errors. (#11930)
• Implement an allow list of content types for which we will attempt to preview a URL. This prevents Synapse from making useless longer-lived connections to streaming media servers. (#11936)
• Fix a long-standing bug where pagination tokens from /sync and /messages could not be provided to the /relations API. (#11952)
• Require that modules register their callbacks using keyword arguments. (#11975)
• Fix a long-standing bug where M_WRONG_ROOM_KEYS_VERSION errors would not include the specced current_version field. (#11988)

Improved Documentation

• Fix typo in User Admin API: unpind -> unbind. (#11859)
• Document images returned by the User List Media Admin API can include those generated by URL previews. (#11862)
• Remove outdated MSC1711 FAQ document. (#11907)
• Correct the structured logging configuration example. Contributed by Brad Jones. (#11946)
• Add information on the Synapse release cycle. (#11954)
• Fix broken link in the README to the admin API for password reset. (#11955)

Deprecations and Removals

• Drop support for webclient listeners and configuring web_client_location to a non-HTTP(S) URL. Deprecated configurations are a configuration error. (#11895)
• Remove deprecated user_may_create_room_with_invites spam checker callback. See the upgrade notes for more information. (#11950)
• No longer build .deb packages for Ubuntu 21.04 Hirsute Hippo, which has now EOLed. (#11961)

Internal Changes

• Enhance user registration test helpers to make them more useful for tests involving application services and devices. (#11615, #11616)
• Improve performance when fetching bundled aggregations for multiple events. (#11660, #11752)
• Fix type errors introduced by new annotations in the Prometheus Client library. (#11832)
• Add missing type hints to replication code. (#11856, #11938)
• Ensure that opentracing scopes are activated and closed at the right time. (#11869)
• Improve opentracing for incoming federation requests. (#11870)
• Improve internal docstrings in synapse.util.caches. (#11876)
• Do not needlessly clear the get_users_in_room and get_users_in_room_with_profiles caches when any room state changes. (#11878)
• Convert ApplicationServiceTestCase to use simple_async_mock. (#11880)
• Remove experimental changes to the default push rules which were introduced in Synapse 1.19.0 but never enabled. (#11884)
• Disable coverage calculation for olddeps build. (#11888)
• Preparation to support sending device list updates to application services. (#11905)
• Add a test that checks users receive their own device list updates down /sync. (#11909)
• Run Complement tests sequentially. (#11910)
• Various refactors to the application service notifier code. (#11911, #11912)
• Tests: replace mocked Authenticator with the real thing. (#11913)
• Various refactors to the typing notifications code. (#11914)
• Use the proper type for the Content-Length header in the UploadResource. (#11927)
• Remove an unnecessary ignoring of type hints due to fixes in upstream packages. (#11939)
• Add missing type hints. (#11953)
• Fix an import cycle in synapse.event_auth. (#11965)
• Unpin frozendict but exclude the known bad version 2.1.2. (#11969)
• Prepare for rename of default Complement branch. (#11971)
• Fetch Synapse's version using a helper from matrix-common. (#11979)

Synapse 1.52.0 (2022-02-08)

No significant changes since 1.52.0rc1.

Note that Twisted 22.1.0 has recently been released, which fixes a security issue within the Twisted library. We do not believe Synapse is affected by this vulnerability, though we advise server administrators who installed Synapse via pip to upgrade Twisted with pip install --upgrade Twisted treq as a matter of good practice. The Docker image matrixdotorg/synapse and the Debian packages from packages.matrix.org are using the updated library.

Synapse 1.52.0rc1 (2022-02-01)

Features

• Remove account data (including client config, push rules and ignored users) upon user deactivation. (#11621, #11788, #11789)
• Add an admin API to reset connection timeouts for remote server. (#11639)
• Add an admin API to get a list of rooms that federate with a given remote homeserver. (#11658)
• Add a config flag to inhibit M_USER_IN_USE during registration. (#11743)
• Add a module callback to set username at registration. (#11790)
• Allow configuring a maximum file size as well as a list of allowed content types for avatars. (#11846)

Bugfixes

• Include the bundled aggregations in the /sync response, per MSC2675. (#11612)
• Fix a long-standing bug when previewing Reddit URLs which do not contain an image. (#11767)
• Fix a long-standing bug that media streams could cause long-lived connections when generating URL previews. (#11784)
• Include a prev_content field in state events sent to Application Services. Contributed by @totallynotvaishnav. (#11798)
• Fix a bug introduced in Synapse 0.33.3 causing requests to sometimes log strings such as HTTPStatus.OK instead of integer status codes. (#11827)

Improved Documentation

• Update pypi installation docs to indicate that we now support Python 3.10. (#11820)
• Add missing steps to the contribution submission process in the documentation. Contributed by @sequentialread. (#11821)
• Remove not needed old table of contents in documentation. (#11860)
• Consolidate the access_token information at the top of each relevant page in the Admin API documentation. (#11861)

Deprecations and Removals

• Drop support for Python 3.6, which is EOL. (#11683)
• Remove the experimental_msc1849_support_enabled flag as the features are now stable. (#11843)

Internal Changes

• Preparation for database schema simplifications: add state_key and rejection_reason columns to events table. (#11792)
• Add FrozenEvent.get_state_key and use it in a couple of places. (#11793)
• Preparation for database schema simplifications: stop reading from event_reference_hashes. (#11794)
• Drop unused table public_room_list_stream. (#11795)
• Preparation for reducing Postgres serialization errors: allow setting transaction isolation level. Contributed by Nick @ Beeper. (#11799, #11847)
• Docker: skip the initial amd64-only build and go straight to multiarch. (#11810)
• Run Complement on the Github Actions VM and not inside a Docker container. (#11811)
• Log module names at startup. (#11813)
• Improve type safety of bundled aggregations code. (#11815)
• Correct a type annotation in the event validation logic. (#11817, #11830)
• Minor updates and documentation for database schema delta files. (#11823)
• Workaround a type annotation problem in prometheus_client 0.13.0. (#11834)
• Minor performance improvement in room state lookup. (#11836)
• Fix some indentation inconsistencies in the sample config. (#11838)
• Add type hints to tests/rest/admin. (#11851)

Synapse 1.51.0 (2022-01-25)

No significant changes since 1.51.0rc2.

Synapse 1.51.0 deprecates webclient listeners and non-HTTP(S) web_client_locations. Support for these will be removed in Synapse 1.53.0, at which point Synapse will not be capable of directly serving a web client for Matrix. See the upgrade notes.

Synapse 1.51.0rc2 (2022-01-24)

Bugfixes

• Fix a bug introduced in Synapse 1.40.0 that caused Synapse to fail to process incoming federation traffic after handling a large amount of events in a v1 room. (#11806)

Synapse 1.50.2 (2022-01-24)

This release includes the same bugfix as Synapse 1.51.0rc2.

Bugfixes

• Fix a bug introduced in Synapse 1.40.0 that caused Synapse to fail to process incoming federation traffic after handling a large amount of events in a v1 room. (#11806)

Synapse 1.51.0rc1 (2022-01-21)

Features

• Add track_puppeted_user_ips config flag to record client IP addresses against puppeted users, and include the puppeted users in monthly active user counts. (#11561, #11749, #11757)
• Include whether the requesting user has participated in a thread when generating a summary for MSC3440. (#11577)
• Return an M_FORBIDDEN error code instead of M_UNKNOWN when a spam checker module prevents a user from creating a room. (#11672)
• Add a flag to the synapse_review_recent_signups script to ignore and filter appservice users. (#11675, #11770)

Bugfixes

• Fix a long-standing issue which could cause Synapse to incorrectly accept data in the unsigned field of events received over federation. (#11530)
• Fix a long-standing bug where Synapse wouldn't cache a response indicating that a remote user has no devices. (#11587)
• Fix an error that occurs whilst trying to get the federation status of a destination server that was working normally. This admin API was newly introduced in Synapse v1.49.0. (#11593)
• Fix bundled aggregations not being included in the /sync response, per MSC2675. (#11612, #11659, #11791)
• Fix the /_matrix/client/v1/room/{roomId}/hierarchy endpoint returning incorrect fields which have been present since Synapse 1.49.0. (#11667)
• Fix preview of some GIF URLs (like tenor.com). Contributed by Philippe Daouadi. (#11669)
• Fix a bug where only the first 50 rooms from a space were returned from the /hierarchy API. This has existed since the introduction of the API in Synapse v1.41.0. (#11695)
• Fix a bug introduced in Synapse v1.18.0 where password reset and address validation emails would not be sent if their subject was configured to use the 'app' template variable. Contributed by @br4nnigan. (#11710, #11745)
• Make the 'List Rooms' Admin API sort stable. Contributed by Daniël Sonck. (#11737)
• Fix a long-standing bug where space hierarchy over federation would only work correctly some of the time. (#11775)
• Fix a bug introduced in Synapse v1.46.0 that prevented on_logged_out module callbacks from being correctly awaited by Synapse. (#11786)

Improved Documentation

• Warn against using a Let's Encrypt certificate for TLS/DTLS TURN server client connections, and suggest using ZeroSSL certificate instead. This works around client-side connectivity errors caused by WebRTC libraries that reject Let's Encrypt certificates. Contibuted by @AndrewFerr. (#11686)
• Document the new SYNAPSE_TEST_PERSIST_SQLITE_DB environment variable in the contributing guide. (#11715)
• Document that the minimum supported PostgreSQL version is now 10. (#11725)
• Fix typo in demo docs: differnt. (#11735)
• Update room spec URL in config files. (#11739)
• Mention python3-venv and libpq-dev dependencies in the contribution guide. (#11740)
• Update documentation for configuring login with Facebook. (#11755)
• Update installation instructions to note that Python 3.6 is no longer supported. (#11781)

Deprecations and Removals

• Remove the unstable /send_relation endpoint. (#11682)
• Remove python_twisted_reactor_pending_calls Prometheus metric. (#11724)
• Remove the password_hash field from the response dictionaries of the Users Admin API. (#11576)
• Deprecate support for webclient listeners and non-HTTP(S) web_client_location configuration. (#11774, #11783)

Internal Changes

• Run pyupgrade --py37-plus --keep-percent-format on Synapse. (#11685)
• Use buildkit's cache feature to speed up docker builds. (#11691)
• Use auto_attribs and native type hints for attrs classes. (#11692, #11768)
• Remove debug logging for #4422, which has been closed since Synapse 0.99. (#11693)
• Remove fallback code for Python 2. (#11699)
• Add a test for an edge case in the /sync logic. (#11701)
• Add the option to write SQLite test dbs to disk when running tests. (#11702)
• Improve Complement test output for Gitub Actions. (#11707)
• Fix docstring on add_account_data_for_user. (#11716)
• Complement environment variable name change and update .gitignore. (#11718)
• Simplify calculation of Prometheus metrics for garbage collection. (#11723)
• Improve accuracy of python_twisted_reactor_tick_time Prometheus metric. (#11724, #11771)
• Minor efficiency improvements when inserting many values into the database. (#11742)
• Invite PR authors to give themselves credit in the changelog. (#11744)
• Add optional debugging to investigate issue 8631. (#11760)
• Remove log_function utility function and its uses. (#11761)
• Add a unit test that checks both client and webclient resources will function when simultaneously enabled. (#11765)
• Allow overriding complement commit using COMPLEMENT_REF. (#11766)
• Add some comments and type annotations for _update_outliers_txn. (#11776)

Synapse 1.50.1 (2022-01-18)

This release fixes a bug in Synapse 1.50.0 that could prevent clients from being able to connect to Synapse if the webclient resource was enabled. Further details are available in this issue.

Bugfixes

• Fix a bug introduced in Synapse 1.50.0rc1 that could cause Matrix clients to be unable to connect to Synapse instances with the webclient resource enabled. (#11764)

Synapse 1.50.0 (2022-01-18)

This release contains a critical bug that may prevent clients from being able to connect. As such, it is not recommended to upgrade to 1.50.0. Instead, please upgrade straight to to 1.50.1. Further details are available in this issue.

Please note that we now only support Python 3.7+ and PostgreSQL 10+ (if applicable), because Python 3.6 and PostgreSQL 9.6 have reached end-of-life.

No significant changes since 1.50.0rc2.

Synapse 1.50.0rc2 (2022-01-14)

This release candidate fixes a federation-breaking regression introduced in Synapse 1.50.0rc1.

Bugfixes

• Fix a bug introduced in Synapse v1.0.0 whereby some device list updates would not be sent to remote homeservers if there were too many to send at once. (#11729)
• Fix a bug introduced in Synapse v1.50.0rc1 whereby outbound federation could fail because too many EDUs were produced for device updates. (#11730)

Improved Documentation

• Document that now the minimum supported PostgreSQL version is 10. (#11725)

Internal Changes

• Fix a typechecker problem related to our (ab)use of nacl.signing.SigningKeys. (#11714)

Synapse 1.50.0rc1 (2022-01-05)

Features

• Allow guests to send state events per MSC3419. (#11378)
• Add experimental support for part of MSC3202: allowing application services to masquerade as specific devices. (#11538)
• Add admin API to get users' account data. (#11664)
• Include the room topic in the stripped state included with invites and knocking. (#11666)
• Send and handle cross-signing messages using the stable prefix. (#10520)
• Support unprefixed versions of fallback key property names. (#11541)

Bugfixes

• Fix a long-standing bug where relations from other rooms could be included in the bundled aggregations of an event. (#11516)
• Fix a long-standing bug which could cause AssertionErrors to be written to the log when Synapse was restarted after purging events from the database. (#11536, #11642)
• Fix a bug introduced in Synapse 1.17.0 where a pusher created for an email with capital letters would fail to be created. (#11547)
• Fix a long-standing bug where responses included bundled aggregations when they should not, per MSC2675. (#11592, #11623)
• Fix a long-standing bug that some unknown endpoints would return HTML error pages instead of JSON M_UNRECOGNIZED errors. (#11602)
• Fix a bug introduced in Synapse 1.19.3 which could sometimes cause AssertionErrors when backfilling rooms over federation. (#11632)

Improved Documentation

• Update Synapse install command for FreeBSD as the package is now prefixed with py38. Contributed by @itchychips. (#11267)
• Document the usage of refresh tokens. (#11427)
• Add details for how to configure a TURN server when behind a NAT. Contibuted by @AndrewFerr. (#11553)
• Add references for using Postgres to the Docker documentation. (#11640)
• Fix the documentation link in newly-generated configuration files. (#11678)
• Correct the documentation for nginx to use a case-sensitive url pattern. Fixes an error introduced in v1.21.0. (#11680)
• Clarify SSO mapping provider documentation by writing def or async def before the names of methods, as appropriate. (#11681)

Deprecations and Removals

• Replace mock package by its standard library version. (#11588)
• Drop support for Python 3.6 and Ubuntu 18.04. (#11633)

Internal Changes

• Allow specific, experimental events to be created without prev_events. Used by MSC2716. (#11243)
• A test helper (wait_for_background_updates) no longer depends on classes defining a store property. (#11331)
• Add type hints to synapse.appservice. (#11360)
• Add missing type hints to synapse.config module. (#11480)
• Add test to ensure we share the same state_group across the whole historical batch when using the MSC2716 /batch_send endpoint. (#11487)
• Refactor tests.util.setup_test_homeserver and tests.server.setup_test_homeserver. (#11503)
• Move glob_to_regex and re_word_boundary to matrix-python-common. (#11505, #11687)
• Use HTTPStatus constants in place of literals in tests.rest.client.test_auth. (#11520)
• Add a receipt types constant for m.read. (#11531)
• Clean up synapse.rest.admin. (#11535)
• Add missing errcode to parse_string and parse_boolean. (#11542)
• Use HTTPStatus constants in place of literals in synapse.http. (#11543)
• Add missing type hints to storage classes. (#11546, #11549, #11551, #11555, #11575, #11589, #11594, #11652, #11653, #11654, #11657)
• Fix an inaccurate and misleading comment in the /sync code. (#11550)
• Add missing type hints to synapse.logging.context. (#11556)
• Stop populating unused database column state_events.prev_state. (#11558)
• Minor efficiency improvements in event persistence. (#11560)
• Add some safety checks that storage functions are used correctly. (#11564, #11580)
• Make get_device return None if the device doesn't exist rather than raising an exception. (#11565)
• Split the HTML parsing code from the URL preview resource code. (#11566)
• Remove redundant COALESCE()s around COUNT()s in database queries. (#11570)
• Add missing type hints to synapse.http. (#11571)
• Add MSC2716 and MSC3030 to /versions -> unstable_features to detect server support. (#11582)
• Add type hints to synapse/tests/rest/admin. (#11590)
• Drop end-of-life Python 3.6 and Postgres 9.6 from CI. (#11595)
• Update black version and run it on all the files. (#11596)
• Add opentracing type stubs and fix associated mypy errors. (#11603, #11622)
• Improve OpenTracing support for requests which use a ResponseCache. (#11607)
• Improve OpenTracing support for incoming HTTP requests. (#11618)
• A number of improvements to opentracing support. (#11619)
• Refactor the way that the outlier flag is set on events received over federation. (#11634)
• Improve the error messages from get_create_event_for_room. (#11638)
• Remove redundant get_current_events_token method. (#11643)
• Convert namedtuples to attrs. (#11665, #11574)
• Update the /capabilities response to include whether support for MSC3440 is available. (#11690)
• Send the Accept header in HTTP requests made using SimpleHttpClient.get_json. (#11677)
• Work around Mjolnir compatibility issue by adding an import for glob_to_regex in synapse.util, where it moved from. (#11696)

Changelogs for older versions can be found here.