What's with the sudden upgrade to 0.19

This explains why I had problems logging in since yesterday, usually I browse through a frontend like Alexandrite or use Jerboa on my phone, spent two hours trying to fix my login info before I gave up and just went to the instance directly.

It does seem extremely odd to upgrade the main instance to 0.19, I wonder if it wasn't intended. As other users mentions lots of features are still not functional and app support is basically nonexistent for 0.19 because of the amount of breaking changes.

Lemmy 0.19 Breaking Changes

Lemmy 0.19.0-rc.4 and Development Update - 2023-11-03

We are also readying another release candidate 0.19.0-rc.4. As usual it is available for testing on voyager.lemmy.ml and by installing the Docker image on your server. There are no breaking changes this time as we are preparing for the final release. It has been one month since we announced the major breaking changes for 0.19. In that sense we would like to know from developers of Lemmy clients and frontends if their projects are ready for 0.19, as we are planning to release it within the next weeks. There is no specific release date, but we will first update lemmy.ml to a release candidate, and if it works well publish the new release shortly after.

I didn't get the impresssion that frontend and client devs have signaled that they were ready for a backend update to 0.19.X. And consequently lemmy.ml is still on 0.18.5.

Just checked my SDF Inbox and noticed a message from them:

Hello and thank you for using lemmy.sdf.org!

There has been a recent uptick in new sign ups, so we'd like to get in touch and welcome you as well as provide updates to existing members.

Currently, the lemmy instance is running v0.18.5 and we're watching 0.19.x beta efforts. We do have testing on a smaller instance and once there is a formal release, we plan to upgrade lemmy.sdf.org

For those who have set up 2FA there has been a reported issue where a user can get "locked out" from their account. If you are in this situation, please reply to this message from the email address you signed up with and we can get you reset.

During the Summer there was a large "reddit exodus" and lots of folks signed up with new instances. However, many of those instances have either have become ghost towns or have disappeared all together.

We want to assure you that lemmy.sdf.org as well as our regional instances are in for the long haul. SDF.ORG is celebrating 36 years as a non-commercial community resource this year.

USA: https://lemmy.sdf.org Europe: https://lemmy.sdfeu.org China: https://lemmy.sdfcn.org Japan: https://lemmy.sdfjp.org India: https://lemmy.sdfin.org

While financial support is not necessary, if you do wish to support our efforts, please consider our "Not a Blue Checkmark Club" which can be joined at https://sdf.org/support

If you have any issues or feedback, please get in touch and we'll help you out as soon as possible.

Thank you for using https://lemmy.sdf.org

Still seems very sudden to update the main instance to 0.19 considering there hasn't been a formal release and it is still very buggy as @GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.org pointed out the Instance block feature isn't even functional, but more importantly almost none of the Apps out there actually work with this version.

Yes, an explanation would be great, @sdf@user224@lemmy.sdf.org

Jerboa is broken as well. Can't log in at all.

Eternity works, FWIW.

On a semi-related note, has anyone managed to use the new instance-block feature in Settings > Blocks? When I try to search for an instance to block, it just displays a short random-looking list of instances, which never changes, and I can't block anything not in that list. Tried in multiple browsers on multiple systems.