Weekly Links: December 14, 2020

Tools

Space Is Here

Space: the final frontier. No, we’re talking about a different space here: “JetBrains Space”, an all-in-one collaboration platform. “Basecamp for developers”, so to speak.

Zawinski’s Law states that “every program attempts to expand until it can read mail”. These days, we can replace “read mail” with “do chat & video calls”: Spaces already got the former and will get the latter (as highlighted by the “Future Plans” section of the blog article).

Talking about blog articles: Dear professional blog writers! Please give your headings an id tag. Then poor fellas like me can properly link to your musings. If your CMS can’t do that, then I do feel truly sorry for you. And take pride in that I can. 😁  Thank you!

Releases

Kubernetes 1.20

Most enterprises either already run on Kubernetes or plan to do so in the future. So they just got the third Kubernetes release this year. The headline feature is the Docker deprecation. Wait, what? Yes, in one year at the earliest, Kubernetes will not run on Docker anymore!

But as this blog entry and this FAQ make clear, it doesn’t really affect us developers much. Kubernetes will still run the containers we produce with Docker. It just won’t use Docker as the container engine under the hood anymore. That’s a relief!

Docker 20.10

You know your company is in trouble when your product announcement headline includes “Yes, it’s alive”. And that’s a valid concern here: As we just learned, Kubernetes will throw out Docker. And Docker (the company) sold its enterprise business late last year and now makes its money from Docker Desktop and Docker Hub. Great move - selling developer tools is a gold mine!

Har, not really: Developers think they can build 90% of all tools themselves over the weekend. And they expect to get the remaining 10% for free. So here’s hoping that the free usage level of Docker Desktop & Docker Hub stay reasonable for now. And that whoever inevitably buys Docker won’t screw us developers too much.

Microsoft, are you listening?! You already bought a struggling developer’s darling and didn’t mess it up so far.

Docker Desktop 3.0.0

From now on, Docker Desktop upgrades will be delta updates. In other words: Much smaller than the typical 400-500 MB update files. Docker also did away with the “Edge” release channel. It contained the experimental features. Now everybody will get these experimental features on the single, remaining release channel. What could go wrong here?!

Spring Boot 2.4.1

This is the first maintenance release of the most current Spring Boot version. It has 59 bug fixes, documentation improvements, and dependency upgrades.

Spring Boot 2.3.7

Here we get 35 bug fixes, documentation improvements, and dependency upgrades for the second-newest Spring Boot version. I’m sure it’s still heavily used, so go upgrade!

Spring Boot 2.2.12

The last “Spring Boot release of the week” has 51 bug fixes, documentation improvements, and dependency upgrades.

A little rant here: My JHipster application is stuck at Spring Boot 2.2.7. JHipster 7.0 is at least ready for Spring 2.3. But that release is stuck in “nearly ready for Release Candidate” limbo. So I’m not holding my breath here. I got upgrade envy! 😒

Spring Framework 5.3.2, 5.2.12, 5.1.20, 5.0.20, and 4.3.30

Another avalanche of maintenance releases: Spring 5.3.2 has 54 fixes and improvements, Spring 5.2.12 got 18, Spring 5.1.20 received 14, Spring 5.0.20 includes 12, and Spring 4.3.30 has 8.

Those were the last releases for Spring 5.0 and 4.3. Rest in pea… Wait, these releases still work. So, run in peace, I guess?