Release/5.6.0-beta1

[Athanasius]

Pre-Release 5.6.0-beta1

• We now test against, and package with, Python 3.10.8.

• The code for sending data to EDDN has been reworked. This changes the 'replay log' from utilising an internal array, backed by a flat file (replay.jsonl), to an sqlite3 database.

  As a result:

  1. Any messages stored in the old replay.jsonl are converted at startup, if that file is present, and then the file removed.
  2. All new messages are stored in this new sqlite3 queue before any attempt is made to send them. An immediate attempt is then made to send any message not affected by "Delay sending until docked".
  3. Sending of queued messages will be attempted every 5 minutes, unless "Delay sending until docked" is active and the Cmdr is not docked in their own ship. This is in case a message failed to send due to an issue communicating with the EDDN Gateway.
  4. When you dock in your own ship an immediate attempt to send all queued messages will be initiated.
  5. When processing queued messages the same 0.4-second inter-message delay as with the old code has been implemented. This serves to not suddenly flood the EDDN Gateway. If any message fails to send for Gateway reasons, i.e. not a bad message, then this processing is abandoned to wait for the next invocation.

  The 5-minute timer in point 2 differs from the old code, where almost any new message sending attempt could initiate processing of the queue. At application startup this delay is only 10 seconds.

  Currently, the feedback of "Sending data to EDDN..." in the UI status line has been removed.

• As a result of this EDDN rework this application now sends appropriate gameversion and gamebuild strings in EDDN message headers.
  The rework was necessary in order to enable this, in case of any queued or delayed messages which did not contain this information in the legacy replay.jsonl format.

  EDDN Listeners - If any message was already delayed such that it did not have the EDDN header recorded, then the gameversion and gamebuild will be empty strings. In order to indicate this the softwareName will have (legacy replay) appended to it, e.g. E:D Market Connector Connector [Windows] (legacy replay). In general this indicates that the message was queued up using a version of EDMC prior to this one. If you're only interested in Live galaxy data then you might want to ignore such messages.

Update 14 and the Galaxy Split

Due to the galaxy split announced by Frontier there are some changes to the major third-party websites and tools.

• Inara has chosen to only accept Live galaxy data on its API. As such EDMarketConnector will not even process Journal data for Inara after 2022-11-29T09:00:00+00:00 unless the gameversion indicates a Live client. This explicitly checks that the game's version is semantically equal to or greater than '4.0.0'.

  If a Live client is not detected, then there is an INFO level logging message "Inara only accepts Live galaxy data", which is also set as the main UI status line. This message will repeat, at most, every 5 minutes.

  If you continue to play in the Legacy galaxy only then you probably want to just disable the Inara plugin with the checkbox on Settings > Inara.

• As this application now sends gameversion in all EDDN message headers you can expect other third-party sites to choose to filter data based on that.

  Look for announcements by individual sites/tools as to what they have chosen to do.

Plugin Developers

• There is a new flag in state passed to plugins, IsDocked. See PLUGINS.md for details.

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This discussion was created from the release Release/5.6.0-beta1.

[Athanasius]

NB: This release is still 32-bit. The 64-bit work is on hold until the dust settles from the galaxy split.

[Athanasius]

Full 5.6.0 due very soon, closing this.