FreeGuide update

I have very little time for FreeGuide at the moment. Part of the problem is that there are lots of boring bugs to fix instead of interesting new features, and it’s hard to motivate myself to get into it. I am really keen on making it Just Work every time, but since other people have been working on the code and quite a lot of it is unfamiliar, it’s a lot of work to work out where to look to fix a problem.

Hopefully when I’ve purged this poker thing from my system I will find time to get into the latest TODO list. At the moment all my FreeGuide time is going into trying to keep up with helping people on the mailing lists. Joe Blow is doing a fantastic job of providing an initial response to lots of mails, but often people are encountering weird bugs that need a developer to get involved. It would be great if some of the other people involved in development were able to help out, but it’s quite a thankless task, and takes away time from developing…

It’s frustrating when quite a few of the bugs we have are things I fixed in a previous version that have crept in with new implementations of existing functionality. It’s taken ages to get FreeGuide stable, and recently it seems to have taken some steps backwards. My feeling is that the percentage of people who are able to install it with no problems and download listings straight away has gone down considerably. I _really_ want to fix this.

That’s why the TODO list for 0.10.4 is pure bugs. We need to make it _work_ before we make it do new stuff. Otherwise people are just going to walk away.

Saying that, the addition of a new experimental vertical listings view by Christian is really exciting. I haven’t even found time to try it out yet: I must examine my priorities. FreeGuide has always been my “main” project but I have been neglecting it as time presses in.

The Boy (as I call him) is doing well and has slept well the last 2 nights, giving us a break from the all-over-body pain of extended tiredness. If this is part of a trend towards more sleep, I may get more time to make FreeGuide better.