August 2014 Summaries

Semaphore conducted an analysis of Ruby version usage among private projects and found significant changes over the past year. The Ruby core team released Ruby 2.1.1 and 2.1.2, while older versions such as 1.8.7 and 1.9.2 reached end of life, and 1.9.3 entered a security maintenance phase. Comparing data from 2013 and 2014, the report highlights a shift in majority usage from older versions to Ruby 2.x, which increased from 30.6% to 51.1% of projects. This shift indicates a growing preference for newer Ruby versions in development environments.

Semaphore has announced that it is now offering a free plan for private projects, allowing up to 100 builds per month, which is ideal for personal projects and early-stage MVPs. The plan includes two boxes for testing two projects simultaneously or running one build with parallel jobs, with each dual-job build counted as two. Additionally, Semaphore is extending its free plan to support unlimited testing and deployment of open-source projects, acknowledging its reliance on open-source software. The platform supports multiple programming languages, and a special open-source plan offers unlimited projects and builds with two processors. Existing open-source project profiles on Semaphore are now public, but access to settings and builds is restricted to collaborators. Semaphore has also reduced the price of its Starter plan, which now costs $29 and includes unlimited private projects and one processor for running tests. Users are encouraged to join the community on Discord and explore the new features and capabilities.

A new "Repository" settings feature has been introduced in project settings to enhance flexibility between Semaphore projects and GitHub repositories. This feature provides visibility into the GitHub repository connected to the project, including the repository owner's username, the Semaphore user's token for GitHub communication, and the status of the repository's deploy key and webhook. It allows users to take corrective actions, such as re-setting a missing deploy key or webhook with a single click, and offers the ability to change the repository for a project if the GitHub repository name, owner, or OAuth API token changes. This ensures projects remain active on Semaphore without losing history, configuration, or collaborators, and users are invited to discuss the feature further on Discord.

Recently, profile pages have been introduced for users, complementing the earlier release of organization and organization profile pages, which include project lists. These user profile pages display basic information and a list of projects associated with the user, accessible by clicking on the username in the project header on the dashboard. Currently, only collaborators on a user's projects can view these profiles. This development is part of an ongoing effort to enhance user experience, with further features in the pipeline. For those interested in discussing these updates, there is an invitation to join the conversation on Discord.