[Fab-user] Status update

[Jeff Forcier]

Hi all,

Some news -- good, neutral, slightly bad, and bad. Apologies for the length.


# Good

@task decorators and namespaces are done (sans one small noncritical
tweak to fab --list.) A ton of smaller 1.1 features/fixes were done a
while back -- so 1.1 could be released anytime (though see "Slightly
bad" below...)

I want to thank Travis (Swicegood) for his effort on these features
and his saint-level patience in waiting ~1.5 years for me to merge
them. Thanks, Travis!


# Neutral

## Releases

I think I'll change the release process: drop the specific 1.1, 1.2,
1.3 etc buckets, put everything into 1.x, 2.x etc, and make every
release a sprint. Grab ~1-2 lynchpin features + ~6 minor features (all
likely related), dump into a short-term milestone, bang them out in a
week/weekend, and release.

Despite wanting smaller/faster releases post-1.0, 1.1 took too long --
because A) I'm a softie and put too much into "the next release", and
B) the GTD-esque idea that large todo lists sap one's will to get
stuff done. (Though C) switching jobs and moving 3000 miles didn't
help :))

This mostly just means I won't even pretend to promise anybody when
their pet fix/feature will go out -- but also that speed will
hopefully, actually increase.

## Github

I'm now strongly considering moving from Redmine to Github (see
http://code.fabfile.org/issues/show/222 for history.) Issues 2.0,
while not perfect, is a vast improvement; and their other value-adds
(pull requests, commit comments etc) are also compelling.

When and how this is done is yet undecided, but I wanted to make the
decision public.


# Slightly bad

1.1 is ready for prime-time...but 1.0.2 isn't...and due to how I
forwardport changes and handle docs, it's currently best to have
bugfix and feature releases in lockstep (I do want to change this
soon, though.) So there's some work to do before both of these go out.

On the plus side, the remaining blocker(s) for 1.0.2 (mostly the
continuing I/O problems) have patches, so it should not take long.


# Bad

I'm going in for surgery tomorrow (Monday) and may be out of
commission for a week or so. I'd love to be productive while stuck in
bed, but past experience shows that this depends on the amount of
pain/killers. (I am what is colloquially known as "a tremendous
wuss".)

So I'll try to reply to any hugely critical emails, but don't be
surprised if I just shut up for the week, other than the occasional
self-pitying tweet.


Thanks,
Jeff

-- 
Jeff Forcier
Unix sysadmin; Python/Ruby engineer
http://bitprophet.org