trunk & tidbits aug 2025 (#49)

Signed-off-by: Andy Piper <andypiper@users.noreply.github.com>

Author: andypiper

content/posts/2025-09-10_trunk_and_tidbits-aug_2025/hero.png

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+---
+title: "Trunk & Tidbits, August 2025"
+description: "Behind-the-scenes updates from the Mastodon team. A trip to FrOSCon, and a lot of preparation for quote posts."
+date: 2025-09-10
+section: Trunk and Tidbits
+categories:
+- Trunk and Tidbits
+- Engineering
+tags:
+- engineering
+- mastodon
+authors:
+- mastodon
+resources:
+- name: hero
+  src: hero.png
+draft: false
+---
+
+Welcome to the 17th edition of Trunk & Tidbits: your monthly update from inside the Mastodon core engineering team. Let’s get into what we were working on in August 2025.
+
+It has been summertime in the northern hemisphere, and various team members have been taking time away. As a result, things were a little more quiet than usual, but progress continues.
+
+## Events
+
+The main event during August was [FrOSCon](https://froscon.org/), held in Sankt Augustin, Germany. [Andy](https://macaw.social/@andypiper) and [David](https://upp2.com/@dave) attended and spoke at the event.
+
+- Andy’s keynote: [Decentralising Freedom - Open Source for Sovereignty](https://media.ccc.de/v/froscon2025-3408-decentralising_freedom_open_source_for_sovereignty)
+- David’s talk: [Taking a Fresh Look at the Fediverse](https://media.ccc.de/v/froscon2025-3346-taking_a_fresh_look_at_the_fediverse)
+
+If you are interested in new features in Mastodon, and our upcoming plans, David’s talk is particularly worth watching. You can also read [Andy’s personal blog post](https://andypiper.co.uk/2025/08/22/talks-and-travels-froscon-germany/) about the event.
+
+In addition to our own team, shout out to [Georg Lukas](https://chaos.social/@ge0rg), who gave a great talk (based on [his blog post](https://op-co.de/blog/posts/samsung_nx_mastodon/)) about [creating a bridge from Samsung NX cameras to post to Mastodon](https://media.ccc.de/v/froscon2025-3304-samsung_camera_to_mastodon_bridge). Pretty detailed, and also very interesting and entertaining!
+
+## Releases
+
+There were no new backend software releases since the previous Trunk & Tidbits ⛱ the current releases of the Mastodon server software are [4.4.3](https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/releases/tag/v4.4.3), [4.3.11](https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/releases/tag/v4.3.11) and [4.2.24](https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/releases/tag/v4.2.24). It is always best to keep your server up-to-date with the current code, as this ensures that you keep up with patches for any pesky bugs, and the community can enjoy the latest features.
+
+## Backend and Web
+
+In August, we reviewed and merged 176 Pull Requests (117 with translation and dependency updates removed) from 14 contributors. Thank you!
+
+<div class="features-list">
+
+- {{< feature-label name="new feature" >}} Lots of work on Quote Posts, now with the ability to create them, change the related settings and retract them. The feature is nearly finished, and you can expect a full blog post on it very soon!
+If you are a Mastodon client developer, you can already look at [this draft implementation guide](https://github.com/mastodon/documentation/pull/1710).
+- {{< feature-label name="performance" >}} Our FASP implementation now track the status of every provider, and stops trying to send data to them if they are not responsive {{< github-pr id=35723 authors="oneiros" >}}
+- {{< feature-label name="interface" >}} The refactor of the web UI theme colours (implementing our new theme tokens) is well underway.
+- {{< feature-label name="container" >}} Our container image is now using the latest Debian release {{< github-pr id=35768 authors="vmstan" >}}
+
+</div>
+
+## Android
+
+We finished working on displaying quote posts, and fixed some more minor bugs and crashes. Released version 2.10.1.
+
+## iOS
+
+Furious paddling beneath the surface continues!
+
+The new post layout is in good shape, and we are pushing through the todo list to deliver quote posts, as well.
+
+## Documentation
+
+We’d like to say thanks to several folks for their contributions to the [documentation repository](https://github.com/mastodon/documentation) last month. The docs can be a good place to help out if you’re looking to get involved, but have less knowledge of Ruby or other coding areas (for example).
+
+We recently updated the README, and added a [DOCSTYLE](https://github.com/mastodon/documentation/blob/main/DOCSTYLE.md) guide, to work towards better consistency in the documentation.
+
+Thanks to iioflow, Tak, cobrachili and joshuajung for helping to improve things for everyone.
+
+## Community
+
+There have been a lot of releases from projects across the developer ecosystem lately 💗
+
+There’s a new release of [Mastodon for the Apple II](https://www.colino.net/wordpress/en/mastodon-for-apple-ii/)! (and, if you love retro computing, check out [the Retro computing category on the third-party apps list](https://joinmastodon.org/apps))
+
+<blockquote class="mastodon-embed" data-embed-url="https://piaille.fr/@colin_mcmillen/115085414289701797/embed" style="background: #FCF8FF; border-radius: 8px; border: 1px solid #C9C4DA; margin: 0; max-width: 540px; min-width: 270px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0;"> <a href="https://piaille.fr/@colin_mcmillen/115085414289701797" target="_blank" style="align-items: center; color: #1C1A25; display: flex; flex-direction: column; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, 'Fira Sans', 'Droid Sans', 'Helvetica Neue', Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; justify-content: center; letter-spacing: 0.25px; line-height: 20px; padding: 24px; text-decoration: none;"> <svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" width="32" height="32" viewBox="0 0 79 75"><path d="M63 45.3v-20c0-4.1-1-7.3-3.2-9.7-2.1-2.4-5-3.7-8.5-3.7-4.1 0-7.2 1.6-9.3 4.7l-2 3.3-2-3.3c-2-3.1-5.1-4.7-9.2-4.7-3.5 0-6.4 1.3-8.6 3.7-2.1 2.4-3.1 5.6-3.1 9.7v20h8V25.9c0-4.1 1.7-6.2 5.2-6.2 3.8 0 5.8 2.5 5.8 7.4V37.7H44V27.1c0-4.9 1.9-7.4 5.8-7.4 3.5 0 5.2 2.1 5.2 6.2V45.3h8ZM74.7 16.6c.6 6 .1 15.7.1 17.3 0 .5-.1 4.8-.1 5.3-.7 11.5-8 16-15.6 17.5-.1 0-.2 0-.3 0-4.9 1-10 1.2-14.9 1.4-1.2 0-2.4 0-3.6 0-4.8 0-9.7-.6-14.4-1.7-.1 0-.1 0-.1 0s-.1 0-.1 0 0 .1 0 .1 0 0 0 0c.1 1.6.4 3.1 1 4.5.6 1.7 2.9 5.7 11.4 5.7 5 0 9.9-.6 14.8-1.7 0 0 0 0 0 0 .1 0 .1 0 .1 0 0 .1 0 .1 0 .1.1 0 .1 0 .1.1v5.6s0 .1-.1.1c0 0 0 0 0 .1-1.6 1.1-3.7 1.7-5.6 2.3-.8.3-1.6.5-2.4.7-7.5 1.7-15.4 1.3-22.7-1.2-6.8-2.4-13.8-8.2-15.5-15.2-.9-3.8-1.6-7.6-1.9-11.5-.6-5.8-.6-11.7-.8-17.5C3.9 24.5 4 20 4.9 16 6.7 7.9 14.1 2.2 22.3 1c1.4-.2 4.1-1 16.5-1h.1C51.4 0 56.7.8 58.1 1c8.4 1.2 15.5 7.5 16.6 15.6Z" fill="currentColor"/></svg> <div style="color: #787588; margin-top: 16px;">Post by @colin_mcmillen@piaille.fr</div> <div style="font-weight: 500;">View on Mastodon</div> </a> </blockquote> <script data-allowed-prefixes="https://piaille.fr/" async src="https://piaille.fr/embed.js"></script>
+
+If you’re into more modern platforms, the Android app Tusky reached version 30! (and version 31 was just published as well) 👏🏻
+
+<blockquote class="mastodon-embed" data-embed-url="https://mastodon.social/@Tusky/115004655628945040/embed" style="background: #FCF8FF; border-radius: 8px; border: 1px solid #C9C4DA; margin: 0; max-width: 540px; min-width: 270px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0;"> <a href="https://mastodon.social/@Tusky/115004655628945040" target="_blank" style="align-items: center; color: #1C1A25; display: flex; flex-direction: column; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, 'Fira Sans', 'Droid Sans', 'Helvetica Neue', Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; justify-content: center; letter-spacing: 0.25px; line-height: 20px; padding: 24px; text-decoration: none;"> <svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" width="32" height="32" viewBox="0 0 79 75"><path d="M63 45.3v-20c0-4.1-1-7.3-3.2-9.7-2.1-2.4-5-3.7-8.5-3.7-4.1 0-7.2 1.6-9.3 4.7l-2 3.3-2-3.3c-2-3.1-5.1-4.7-9.2-4.7-3.5 0-6.4 1.3-8.6 3.7-2.1 2.4-3.1 5.6-3.1 9.7v20h8V25.9c0-4.1 1.7-6.2 5.2-6.2 3.8 0 5.8 2.5 5.8 7.4V37.7H44V27.1c0-4.9 1.9-7.4 5.8-7.4 3.5 0 5.2 2.1 5.2 6.2V45.3h8ZM74.7 16.6c.6 6 .1 15.7.1 17.3 0 .5-.1 4.8-.1 5.3-.7 11.5-8 16-15.6 17.5-.1 0-.2 0-.3 0-4.9 1-10 1.2-14.9 1.4-1.2 0-2.4 0-3.6 0-4.8 0-9.7-.6-14.4-1.7-.1 0-.1 0-.1 0s-.1 0-.1 0 0 .1 0 .1 0 0 0 0c.1 1.6.4 3.1 1 4.5.6 1.7 2.9 5.7 11.4 5.7 5 0 9.9-.6 14.8-1.7 0 0 0 0 0 0 .1 0 .1 0 .1 0 0 .1 0 .1 0 .1.1 0 .1 0 .1.1v5.6s0 .1-.1.1c0 0 0 0 0 .1-1.6 1.1-3.7 1.7-5.6 2.3-.8.3-1.6.5-2.4.7-7.5 1.7-15.4 1.3-22.7-1.2-6.8-2.4-13.8-8.2-15.5-15.2-.9-3.8-1.6-7.6-1.9-11.5-.6-5.8-.6-11.7-.8-17.5C3.9 24.5 4 20 4.9 16 6.7 7.9 14.1 2.2 22.3 1c1.4-.2 4.1-1 16.5-1h.1C51.4 0 56.7.8 58.1 1c8.4 1.2 15.5 7.5 16.6 15.6Z" fill="currentColor"/></svg> <div style="color: #787588; margin-top: 16px;">Post by @Tusky@mastodon.social</div> <div style="font-weight: 500;">View on Mastodon</div> </a> </blockquote> <script data-allowed-prefixes="https://mastodon.social/" async src="https://mastodon.social/embed.js"></script>
+
+Here are just a couple more highlights of other recent releases:
+
+- [TootSDK](https://github.com/TootSDK/TootSDK/tags), a Swift library, made a number of releases during August.
+- [Mastodon.py](http://Mastodon.py), a Python library, brought functionality up-to-date with Mastodon 4.4.3 (and made a few more releases in August, as well).
+
+## Thanks
+
+First and foremost: Thank You for using Mastodon, and for believing in a better social web, one outside of corporate interests and without obscure algorithms.
+
+We recently ran a small experiment with an in-app donation banner (visible to people on our own Mastodon servers), and appreciated the financial support that it generated. Even without that banner though, you can support us any time: we find recurring donations particularly helpful. If you become [a Patreon supporter](https://www.patreon.com/mastodon), you can also follow our updates over there, for even more news about what the team is doing to support the Fediverse!
+
+{{< donate >}}