Dendrite

Dendrite is a second-generation Matrix homeserver written in Go. It intends to provide a simple, reliable and efficient replacement for Synapse for small homeservers:

• Simple: packaged as a single binary with minimal required configuration options.
• Reliable: uses the same test suite as Synapse as well as a brand new Go test suite.
• Efficient: A small memory footprint with better baseline performance than an out-of-the-box Synapse.

As of September 2020, Dendrite is now stable. This means:

• Dendrite has periodic semver releases.
• Dendrite supports database schema upgrades between versions.
• Breaking changes will not occur on minor releases.
• Dendrite is ready for early adopters.

This does not mean:

• Dendrite is bug-free.
• All of the CS/Federation APIs are implemented.
• Dendrite is ready for massive homeserver deployments.

Quick start

Requires Go 1.13+ and SQLite3 (Postgres is also supported):

$ git clone https://github.com/matrix-org/dendrite
$ cd dendrite

# Generate self-signed certificate and an event signing key.
# If you want to federate with other homeservers, you need a valid TLS certificate e.g from Let's Encrypt
$ go build ./cmd/generate-keys
$ ./generate-keys --private-key matrix_key.pem --tls-cert server.crt --tls-key server.key

# Copy and modify the config file:
# You'll need to set a server name and paths to the keys at the very least.
$ cp dendrite-config.yaml dendrite.yaml

# build and run the server
$ go build ./cmd/dendrite-monolith-server
$ ./dendrite-monolith-server --tls-cert server.crt --tls-key server.key --config dendrite.yaml

Then point your favourite Matrix client at http://localhost:8008. For full installation information, see INSTALL.md. For running in Docker, see build/docker.

Progress

We use a script called Are We Synapse Yet which checks Sytest compliance rates. Sytest is a black-box homeserver test rig with around 900 tests. The script works out how many of these tests are passing on Dendrite and it updates with CI. As of August 2020 we're at around 54% CS API coverage and 70% Federation coverage, though check CI for the latest numbers. In practice, this means you can communicate locally and via federation with Synapse servers such as matrix.org reasonably well. There's a long list of features that are not implemented, notably:

• Receipts
• Push
• Search and Context
• User Directory
• Presence
• Guests

We are prioritising features that will benefit single-user homeservers first (e.g Receipts, E2E) rather than features that massive deployments may be interested in (User Directory, OpenID, Guests, Admin APIs, AS API). This means Dendrite supports amongst others:

• Core room functionality (creating rooms, invites, auth rules)
• Federation in rooms v1-v6
• Backfilling locally and via federation
• Accounts, Profiles and Devices
• Published room lists
• Typing
• Media APIs
• Redaction
• Tagging
• E2E keys and device lists

Contributing

Everyone is welcome to help out and contribute! See CONTRIBUTING.md to get started!

Discussion

For questions about Dendrite we have a dedicated room on Matrix #dendrite:matrix.org. Development discussion should happen in #dendrite-dev:matrix.org.