Well this is an exciting update to share. Saelos was announced and released on April 15. Today is April 29, exactly 2 weeks later. Because everyone is busy I’m sure you haven’t been able to keep up with the progress the same way that I have been so I figured the best thing to do is to write a short update post to give you a sort of a status update on how things have been progressing.

This is of course very early beta software (some would even call it alpha, simply due to its newness) but the status of the code causes me to suggest that we have moved much quicker into beta software status.

These numbers are constantly changing as you can imagine so please don’t put too much faith in any one metric. Rather I’d recommend looking at them as a brief snapshot or glimpse into the growth being experienced. And let me be the first to tell you that growth is evident and exciting. Saelos is moving along at an excellent pace and perhaps even more exciting growing we’re moving forward in a very sustainable fashion. You’ll see why after I share a bit more information.

Okay, here’s a quick stats list:

Stats

  • Downloads/Sites Created: 264
  • Releases: 5 Beta Releases
  • Slack: 22 members
  • Website: 49 members
  • Pull Requests: 0 open / 7 closed

Wow, those types of numbers and to be only 14 days old is quite exciting. Perhaps the last statistic is the one that speaks the most to me. As an engineer at heart I am always looking for indicators that other developers are also interested in and willing to contribute to a project where I am involved. The number of pull requests submitted by community volunteers in the very first couple of weeks of this project is indicative of several things - including the ease of readability of the platform and code.

In fact, even better, I saw 4 community created pull requests in the first 24 hours! (Of course a couple of these were minor issues, but still, the point remains the same: the software is easy-to-read and modify.)

I should also mention the new website just briefly since I realized I never shared anything about that earlier (I’m not lying, the time is just flying by these days). I also launched https://www.saelos.org this past week which gives an online home for conversations, announcements, and other things related to Saelos. You should join in so your voice is heard and you’ll be able to share your ideas for future releases of Saelos and begin getting involved yourself (Are you interested in documentation? If so, we should talk).

Notable

Beyond the highly notable achievements listed above occurring within the first 2 weeks of release an additional exciting contribution came in the work of [Luiz](https://github.com/luizeof) who has already created and taken lead for maintaining a Saelos Docker container. This makes installation and setup of a new Saelos instance incredibly fast and simple (and significantly encourages new users to try Saelos).

Next Milestones

The next obvious question is “now what?” What release comes next and when? This question is a little harder to answer simply because when dealing with beta software new issues or uncovered all the time and the desire is to create as stable a product as possible before releasing a 1.0 stable. Currently there are about 10 issues open in GitHub but of course they vary in difficulty and time to implementation.

Major Release

The next more imminent milestone is the release of an RC (Release Candidate). At this point I’ll have a pretty good idea of what the 1.0 Stable will look like and this release will be a pre-packaged version to begin fixing any last minute bugs before release. This RC should be fairly close to stable. At the moment I don’t have a solid date for that release because we may iterate through a few more - Beta releases first as we knock out issues and make system improvements.

Next Beta

The next beta will more than likely be released next Friday afternoon or Saturday as time permits. I am hopeful to see a number of the open issues resolved with this beta and I can share those fixes as they are merged.

Staying Connected

The last thing I’ll leave you with for this quick update post is a very simple and easy call-to-action. If you like this content and want to be kept in the loop regarding all things Saelos then you need to fill out this short form and you’ll get an update newsletter direct in your inbox each time once is created.

That’s it. I’ll do my best to keep the Saelos Slack channels updated as well as the newsletter and if you are following my blog here, you’ll also get updated whenever I post something here too.

Have a great rest of your weekend and I’ll see you in Saelos!