There’s been a lot going in the Urbit world, let’s get into it.

Groups & Talk Update

Over the past few months, there’s been a major overhaul of Urbit’s most developed application, Groups. This comes courtesy of Tlon, who have been hard at work on their application suite. Through a series of network updates, users across the network performed a data migration when they updated their urbit, and the original Groups transformed into then new Groups and Talk apps.

In the centralized application world, running a data migration at scale is the domain of back-end developers or DevOps specialists. On Urbit, countless individuals installed an update and it happened automatically.

This first of its kind update required a significant amount of work not only to the Groups interface, but to the Arvo kernel itself. We’d like to congratulate everyone who helped to make it happen.

This major migration didn’t happen without hiccups, however. If you’ve been having issues with your ship then we’d recommend checking out this post on troubleshooting common issues.

Network Updates

In Urbit core development news, the Urbit Foundation has now officially taken over responsibility of the release process from Tlon. From here on out there will be weekly releases to the network, every Tuesday. Reminder: if you’re a developer and wish to stay apprised of the detailed changelog, we recommend subscribing to the dev mailing list.

Over the past few months several updates have been released that have delivered projects that are significant milestones in developer experience, release frequency, and backwards compatibility. These include:

• An Improved Vere Build System

• Terminal Improvements

• A dramatically improved Upgrade System

• A system for automatically generating documentation from code comments

See more of the core development timeline in the completed section of the Roadmap, and what’s up next.

Media

A few years ago setting up Urbit was a complex technical process. Now getting on the network is just a few clicks away. Read this post to see which way to get on the network is right for you.

Tlon CEO Galen Wolfe-Pauly chats with the ladies of Boys Club and explains the fundamentals of Urbit. A great introduction to Urbit, and a great listen to refresh your memory.

Developer Content

In addition to Hoon School Live and App School Live, the Urbit Foundation is now offering two additional courses later this year from professor NE Davis: App Workshop Live and Core School Live. Visit the Courses page on developers.urbit.org for dates and more information on all upcoming courses.

The next session of Hoon School Live kicks off March 20th, 2023. Register soon!

App workbook

We’ve also published a new App Workbook guide to help sharpen your application development skills.