Changes to the Development Process
Fornjot is in a bit of a weird spot these days. I used to work on it full-time (or near enough) for over a year, January 2022 to May 2023. I was forced to reduce my level of effort after my sponsorship income had a significant drop for the first time.
I've still done a lot since then. But there are these times, a few days here, a week or two there, when development work is kinda drowned out by other responsibilities. Sometimes those are directly related to the project, like planning, publishing releases, or interacting with sponsor and the public. Other times they are only marginally related (yet still necessary) tasks like bookkeeping and taxes.
Either way, it would be good for the project, if there was more of a continuous momentum on the development side. To make that happen under the current constraints, I'm making the following changes:
- There will be no more releases for the time being. After stopping the weekly release schedule, releases have become irregular and difficult to publish. They are too much of a distraction, for seemingly little gain. The latest version of the code will always remain available in the repository. I encourage everybody who wants to try out Fornjot to look there.
- I will no longer submit pull requests for my own work. I think doing this has served the project well, but it comes with too much overhead. With contributions way down, and my development time reduced so much, it's better if I just commit to
main
directly, without much procedure around that.
These changes remove overhead, making it easier for me to keep up momentum. Whether I have a few hours or just a few minutes on a given day. But they also reduce the quality of communication and coordination around my work. I strongly believe that at this point, this is the right trade-off.