The day after Xmas, I finally found some time to bundle up the lastest and greatest of FreeSewing and wrap it in a neat little package and stamp it with FreeSewing v3.1 🎉
It’s our first release since the long wait for v3.0 and we jumped right ahead to v3.1, no patch release, no nothing. Is that because we are perfect and write code that is entirely bug-free? Alas, that is not the case.
Instead, the reason this is the first post-v3 release is because we’ve changed how we do things in v3 which makes releases less of a big deal. Bear with me, I’ll explain what I mean by that. But before I do so, let’s look at those two new designs:
Meet Otis and Lumira
There are 2 new designs in this release: Otis is a baby romper, and Lumira are leggings. Both are the work of Wouter Van Wageningen, aka FreeSewing’s Number One.
I can see both of these becoming rather popular. Otis requires only a single measurement (the waist) so they are perfect gift material. And leggings are something everyone should have in their wardrobe. (I am one of those people who is cold all the time, so I enjoy wearing them under my other trousers.)
We could use some example pictures, so go ahead and try them out now. When you’re done, don’t forget to showcase them.
Why you won’t see many v3 path releases
Without wanting to get too much in the weeds, the way we build and deploy FreeSewing.org has changed since version 3. In the v2 era, designs on FreeSewing.org were loaded from the packages we release. As such all new designs, as well as all changes or bugfixes required a new release to be published.
These days, everything is built from source and there is — at least for FreeSewing.org to function — no reason to publish new releases. That is why we went from v3.0.0 to v3.1.0 an never saw a v3.0.1. It’s not that no bug fixes occur (check the changelog for details) it’s just that there’s no need for us to publish a new release for each bug fix.
There are still reasons to publish updated versions of our software. For one thing, changes to our standalone development environment still require a new published version. And there are the people who use our software for their own purposes, who benefit from these updates.
But all in all, you can expect to see fewer releases, in particular fewer patch releases as there is little reason for us to put those out. Instead, updates, bug fixes, improvements, and new features are now delivered as a continious stream of small steps, rather than the occasional leap forward.