I’d finished my turkey. Finished my pie. Then retreated to the other room with my laptop to finish my project.
Years ago while I was still freelancing, I fell behind on a project and had to lug my laptop along with me to the family reunion/feast on Thanksgiving. This meant I had to forgo games with my cousins, football in the yard, and catching up with relatives so I could work. It meant I also got paid, but I wasn’t billing anywhere near enough to justify abandoning family traditions for my computer.
Never. Work. During. Holidays.
WordPress 5.0
The next version of WordPress is dropping sometime soon. It was originally scheduled for earlier this week, but has been bumped to (maybe?) sometime next week. That’s great. It’s shaping up to be a great release, but there’s still work to be done.
As much as I love to ship code, it needs to be “done” before it goes out the door.
Given the rapid pace at which new bugs are being discovered, triaged, and patched, I’m not convinced we’re ready for a release. Let alone a release candidate. This is despite the latest release candidate having been scheduled yesterday … with several open bugs still tied to the official 5.0 release deadline.
For the record: a release candidate is intended to be a version of the software you think is done done and ready for final review before the release heads out the door. WordPress 5.0 is not yet in a “finished” state. A release candidate should be releasable and we’re not there yet.
We’re still chasing after an arbitrary deadline, and while we won’t be shipping things during the Thanksgiving holiday in the US, we’ll still likely be shipping during one of the largest travel seasons. Bumping things back to December is no better as we start treading on various other major holidays – Hanukkah is Dec 2-10, Christmas on the 25th, New Years … and I’m likely forgetting others.
WordPress 5.0 is going to be great.
It should still be held back until January at the earliest.
Release Freeze
To that end, I’m going to step up and set an example.
While I will be working during December and, more than likely, writing code for new features and projects I will not ship any new feature or product releases in December.
This will give me time to focus on family and treat hobby coding as what it is – a hobby. It will help me balance “work” and life and regroup at the top of the new year with fun projects and releases. It also means anyone who relies on my code won’t have to rush to report bugs or patch conflicts or do anything to support my release until they’re also done with a family break and well established into the new year.
This release freeze will include not adding any new release hashes to DGXPCO.
If you’re using my plugin to ensure any updates to WordPress are vetted and cryptographically signed, my commitment to waiting until January to release an update means, regardless of when WordPress 5.0 drops, your site won’t see an update until January.
I’ll likely be taking some time during December to queue up a bunch of new stuff, so rest assured that work will continue and new releases will ship. But know that nothing I do or release will result in your having to lug your computer along to family events.
I learned from that mistake. Let’s work together to keep anyone else from having to live through it as well.
