[tor-reports] Damian's Status Report - August-October 2016

[Damian Johnson]

Hi all! For the first time since I started writing these in 2010
missed a couple. Health issues knocked me out of commission but
finally all sorted out. Here's the funner stuff I was up to in
August through October.

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Nyx Rewrite
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Done! Er... well, done-ish.

Finished rewriting the last of Nyx's legacy codebase (menu and
controller modules). For users this means we now have the tested,
python 3.x compatible codebase that will be Nyx 2.0.0.

So why no release? Couple reasons...

1. Stability. Slick as the new codebase is it introduced regressions
   causing non-deterministic terminal glitches. Unfortunately these
   are gonna be a real pita to track down...

2. New website. This is actually pretty far along. Content is there,
   work left is mostly styling. My web-dev fu isn't too strong so
   this may take a while.

As some of you may have noticed Stem hasn't received a release in
over a year. This isn't due to idleness. In fact, Stem has enough
changes to pack several releases...

  https://stem.torproject.org/change_log.html#unreleased

Rather, I've kept delaying Stem's 1.5.0 release over and over to
coincide with Nyx's. 'Just one more month!' I told myself. Ooooh,
such cute optimism.

So Stem will get its release. Probably this week.

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Few other noteworthy things...

 * Tor dev meeting. Thanks Jon for making it a success!

 * Finished running this year's GSoC. Program went great, though
   little sad I wasn't up for the mentor summit.

 * Stem can now download microdescriptor consensuses.

 * Helped Roger investigate relays failing to serve current
   consensus data. (#20501)

 * Moved DocTor from Tonga to Bifroest among other monitoring updates.

 * Neat non-tor stuff. Dota Internationals, Midsummer Renaissance
   Festival, and vacation up to Bellingham for the Sparks Museum
   and Boeing Factory Tour.

Cheers! -Damian