Nuvola 4.14

Nuvola 4.14 was released on November 11th, 2018.

This is a concise changelog. Refer to Nuvola News Announcement for a more verbose one and to see some screenshots.

What’s New for Users

• New Scripts: Tidal and MentorFM (both maintained by Jiří Janoušek).
• Updated Installation Instructions: Removed: Ubuntu 16.10 Yakkety Yak, Fedora 25 and 26. Added: Ubuntu 18.10 Cosmic Cuttlefish [GitHub ticket], elementaryOS 5 Juno [GitHub ticket], and Fedora 29 [GitHub ticket].
• Upgraded Library Stack: Nuvola now uses GNOME Platform 3.30 instead of 3.28. This is a significant change because the base of this runtime and the way it is built have changed completely. Chromium engine was updated from 68.0.3440.75 to 70.0.3538.77 bringing the latest bug fixes and enhancements [GitHub ticket]. It is now built with Ubuntu 18.04 LTS toolchain instead of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.

Other changes

• Application entries of individual Nuvola apps in GNOME software and other software centers using AppStream metadata now contain their own screenshot. Previously, the screenshot of Deezer was used for all apps which might have been confusing. [GitHub ticket]

• The Start-up dialog was tweaked to achieve more straightforward flow. For example, if you have just upgraded, Nuvola shows an info bar “You have upgraded to Nuvola X.Y.Z.” with a link “What’s New?” and a “Continue” button. Previously, users needed to click the close button of the window to continue, which might not have been clear.

• Nuvola now links to Tiliado Privacy Policy. The short version is: We collect only the data we need to provide you with our services. We don’t sell your personal information. If you have any questions, feedback or a data removal request, don’t hesitate to contact support: support@tiliado.eu

What’s New for Script Maintainers

• Nuvola CDK and ADK no longer ship LxTerminal. It depends on GTK+ 2 which isn’t included in GNOME Platform 3.30.
• Chromium engine was updated from 68.0.3440.75 to 70.0.3538.77. [GitHub ticket]
• Nuvola ADK: The Standard JavaScript style checker was upgraded from 10.0.3 to 12.0.1, which introduced a few new rules and made some of the already present rules more strict. Please consult the changelog to find out whether you need to fix your scripts. Don’t forget that you can run standard --fix to fix some style violations automatically. [GitHub ticket]
• The URL https://www.facebook.com/login* pattern was white-listed in the filter of external addresses. It is used by MentorFM, for example.

What’s New for Third-Party Packagers

• Various incompatibility issues with Python 3.7 were fixed [GitHub ticket 1, GitHub ticket 2].
• Nuvola is now tested with GNOME Platform 3.30 [GitHub ticket] and Chromium Embedded Framework branch 3538 [GitHub ticket].
• Continuous Integration is now run with Fedora 29.
• New scripts: MentorFM and Tidal.
• Diorite: Configure script configure was removed. Use waf --configure instead.

Under the Hood

Nuvola codebase is quite old and it bugs me that it doesn’t reflect all my knowledge and experience I have gained over the past few years. Now, I have finally enough time to change that, so Diorite library, the utility and widget library for Nuvola Runtime, undergoes a significant refactoring.

Continuous Integration of Diorite and Nuvola was improved: The code style of Diorite and Nuvola is checked with Vala Linter (Vala code) and StandardJS linter (JavaScript code).