We just released Sparkle 2.8.7.
The short story is it’s an urgent release to work around a regression in Chrome 79.
The longer story is it was supposed to be a very fast release, but there were a few roadblocks:
- Chrome 79 was released on December 10th
- regrettably we didn’t realize was a regression in Chrome on certain complex layouts
- we submitted Sparkle 2.8.6 for Apple’s review on December 12th
- Apple approved Sparkle 2.8.6 after a 22 minute long review, so we released it on December 13th
- as soon as we were made aware of the Chrome issue we immediately developed a fix and submitted it to Apple (this explains the lack of a translation of the release notes, we wanted it to be quick), this was December 22nd
- this time, Apple took until last night to review Sparkle 2.8.7, a total of 18 days considering Apple’s Christmas holiday
The takeaway is we want to treat all customers equally, and match release dates, but this instability in review schedule is becoming hard to justify, we really really really would have wanted to release the update where possible. Apple has their reasons (which they don’t disclose), and we respect their process. We also need to take care of our customers when a critical situation like this arises. We’ll see what will become of this in the future.
While waiting for Apple’s review, we filed a bug with the Chrome team, not really hoping for much (huge companies are often very slow and opaque to deal with), but surprisingly they were very reactive, hoping the Chrome bug can be fixed quickly. This is the bug in case you are curious:
https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1040461#c10
There are a few other minor fixes in 2.8.7 worth mentioning here:
- fix export crash with some stick to top setups
- fix for project files losing all text when opened in Catalina, saved, reopened on High Sierra and earlier
- fix pages flagged as “exclude from menus” being re-added on newly added devices
- fix highlighting when dragging element from and to privacy popup
- fix privacy buttons copy/paste
In the mean time we have even more fixes upcoming in 2.8.8, but we’re constrained by Apple review times. Hoping in a fast turnaround this time!