It uses a very lightly modified fork and is currently missing the most recent minor bug fix release from a few days ago. The library doesn't completely abstract it though so it still has to adapt to various changes. The library doesn't offer any guarantee of a stable API.
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It's also completely possible that they'll do things like migrating their code to Kotlin similar to how they started replacing Objective-C with Swift in their iOS app. It can definitely work long-term, but it depends on keeping up with everything that ends up changing in Signal.
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I think that's a lower-level component than libsignal-service-java equivalent to github.com/signalapp/libs. It's the cryptographic protocol rather than the higher level messaging protocol. They use the C code in the iOS app and the Android app and server both use the Java code.
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yeah, I mean, what do you think about building something on top of it? because i'm annoyed with Signal Desktop badly enough i want to do that.
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I'm wary of building anything on their code or forking anything to make changes because of their hostility towards alternate clients using their servers and their lack of need to preserve any backwards compatibility due to forcing upgrades, which is an overall positive thing.
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There's the option of running the Android app in the official KVM-based Android emulator but that only acts as the main client rather than a secondary client like the desktop app. It honestly probably uses less memory than Signal Desktop, especially after being open a while.
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i heavily rely on desktop notifications, so if i had to resort to that i'd probably just pick a different client entirely
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I think KDE Connect can bridge the notifications including replying to them from the desktop but I'm not sure if that requires using KDE. I just feel like trying to use an unofficially supported client is a recipe for ending up needing to do a fair bit of work to keep it working.
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I dealt with this back when Signal didn't yet support running without Play Services (which wasn't how it was originally when it was SMS-based as TextSecure), and I ended up needing to take over maintenance of the patch set, which caused hostility with them that I didn't want.
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It's honestly the kind of project where I feel like they'd make drastic breaking changes just to cause a massive hassle for unsupported clients that they don't want using their servers. I'm a fan of it but at the same time I really dislike their approach to some things.