Thread by @H_O_L_O_

Dev Update (1/17)
There is so much that has been moving and shaking with Holo and Holochain this past week. I'll share briefly about a few items and hopefully soon you'll have videos and Dev Pulses that go into all the detail about the new work.

#Holo #Holochain

(2/17) On the Holo hosting side of things, the context is set by the recently announced HoloPort Alpha Program. As you probably read in the announcement, this program became a necessity for us to continue moving down the path to wider Alpha releases.

(3/17)Here's what we've been working on:

Networks:
We've formalised our networks with end-to-end infrastructure and we've automated the process for deployment to these networks.

(4/17) What this means is that we now have a devNet, a flexNet and an alphaNet. The upcoming Pre-Release test of hosted Elemental Chat will be running on the flexNet.

(5/17) Pre-Release Test Prep:
150+ HoloPorts signed up for the test and we're preparing to move them to the flexNet where they will have the latest Holo hosting software installed along with Elemental Chat.

(6/17) The team will then send the invitations to web users to join the test. Remember - in this test, regular web users are testing a Holochain hApp on Holo, it's not just the hosts. We expect to invite 100-200 people to this test in small batches over the coming week or so.

(7/17) We took a little extra time preparing for this test because we were aligning the process to be as close as possible to the ones we'll use during the HoloPort Alpha Program.

(8/17) HoloPort Alpha Program:
This program requires that we operationalise the registration, communication, automatic selection and movement of HoloPorts across our new networks...

(9/17)...as well as the reporting back to participants and the general public about the activity of ports running on the network. This is a lot of work being delivered!

(10/17) We've just about finished the registration app and we're building out the tool that our team will use to support participants this week. We have also completed all the scripts necessary to pull network data for HoloPort verification and uptime reporting.

(11/17) Holochain:
Progress continues on DHT sharding and many changes were made after the intense testing by the Holo team using SQLite.

(12/17)We continue to run tests of Elemental Chat on new versions of Holochain to provide feedback, but the Holo team is moving forward with a version of Holochain that is a little more stable while these changes continue to evolve.

(13/17) We have not yet received the upstream needed fix from the Wasmer team but we do have a work-around that is implemented in the recent point release that we completed for Holochain.

(14/17) Holochain Launcher:
Finally, we have made significant progress on a new tool - the Holochain Launcher. This tool is for end-users of Holochain apps and it allows them to install a hApp DNA and UI bundle and then to launch the app in a browser.

(15/17) It's currently working on Linux and we're enabling it to work for Mac and Windows as well. This tool is a bit like 'holoscape' which was used with an earlier Holochain version.

(16/17) The new tool is lighter and will be easier to extend. It's not real pretty yet but it's functionally complete for launching and running Holochain apps with a single DNA and UI.

(17/17) And there's more... as of this week, we've successfully tested the first community built hApp as a hosted application on Holo. Stay tuned...