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Release Radar · January 2022 Edition

Here’s January’s top staff picks on projects that shipped major version releases.

·@MishManners
| 7 minutes

The start to the new year has been a hectic one, with some people slowly coming back to work, and others deciding to continue coding from home. Whether developing from the comfort of your house – or at a random cafe – it hasn’t stopped the community from shipping awesome open source projects and updates. Everything from big open source libraries to weekend hobbies have been built and shipped over the last month. Here’s this month’s top staff picks on projects that shipped major version releases.

nut.js 2.0

We talk a lot about Node.js projects on the Release Radar, and here’s another for you. nut.js is a desktop automation framework for Node.js. It works on Windows, macOS, and Linux. It provides a  plugin system so you can customise it to your needs. The latest update introduces a more powerful plugin system to give users even more customisation. nut.js version 2.0 now supports the new Apple Silicon chips. Read all the breaking changes in the release notes.

Front Matter 6.0

Lots of developers are using Visual Studio Code (VS Code) nowadays. So why not build something that runs directly in VS Code? Front Matter is a CMS running in VS Code. It gives users the power of CMS, with the flexibility and speed of a static site generator. The latest version has added support for editing data files, support multi-dimensional content type fields, and more. There’s also a shiny new dashboard:

tfsec 1.0

Terraform is an open source infrastructure tool to manage cloud services. tsfec is a static security scanner for your Terraform code. It runs locally in your CI pipelines. There’s some neat, developer-friendly output, and documentation checks. It’s a developer-first approach to scanning all your templates. Congrats to tfsec on shipping your first official release! 🎉

HTTPie 3.0

Want a modern, user-friendly command-line HTTP client for the API era? Then look no further than HTTPie. Mmmm pie 🥧. HTTPie has support for JSON, colours, sessions, downloads, plug-ins, and more. The latest version comes with nested JSON, a plug-in manager, and lots more. Read up on the features and take a full tour by clicking the Twitter link below.

Big Book of R 2.0

The Big Book of R is a collection of almost 300 R programming books and resources. It’s the perfect place to get started with your R programming journey. Version 2.0 comes with some welcome updates for the maintainer. Resources are automatically added and alphabetised per chapter. There are also a few new automations built into the backend to help with discoverability. Check out this awesome site, and if you want to contribute, you can do so directly via the Google Form.

Minimal Theme for Twitter 4.0

Sometimes, Twitter can get overwhelming. Minimal Theme for Twitter (or just Minimal Twitter) is a browser extension, that gives users more options to change the Twitter UI. You can also personalise your Twitter experience. The latest update comes with new popup UI, more control, and a new ‘zen mode’. Head to the website to grab the extension for Chrome, Firefox, and Edge.

RxDB 11.0

Short for Reactive Database, RxDB is a NoSQL-database for JavaScript applications; websites, Node.js, progressive web apps, and more. RxDB provides modules for real-time replication with any CouchDB compliant endpoint, or custom GraphQL endpoint. The latest version focuses on improving the performance of your applications, particularly when handling lots of documents. Read all the updates on the extensive changelog notes.

d3-graph-controller 2.0

We feature lots of Typescript projects on the Release Radar and here’s another for you. d3-graph-controller is a TypeScript library for visualizing and simulating interactive graphs. The new version comes with refined API, and new configuration options. Read up on all the changes over on the changelog notes.

PyBaMM 21.12

Not all releases follow semantic versioning by number. Some use the date instead. That’s what PyBaMM does. They are now shipping monthly major releases that are tagged as the date. PyBaMM version 21.12 is the version built during December of 2021, and released on the first of January. Python Battery Mathematical Modelling (or PyBaMM for short) uses automatic differentiation and numerical solvers to solve physics-based electrochemical DAE models. The latest version adds Voltage termination criteria for experiments, new reaction kinetics, cylindrical geometry, and more.

AnotherPomodoro 1.0

Do you ever jump onto your browser to do work, only to find that three hours later you’re still looking at cat videos? Then you need AnotherPomodoro. The Pomodoro technique was developed by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s as a way to manage time and stay productive. AnotherPomodoro takes that to the next level as an app running in your browser. With integrated TODO lists, lots of colours, custom timer length, three languages, and lots of display features, you’ll never get lost looking at cat videos again. Congrats on shipping your first official release after over 430 commits! 🎉

Hello Wordl 1.0

The word game that’s taken the world by storm: Wordle. But not Wordle as you know it. This is Hello Wordl, a way for you to play Wordl as much as you want, with a twist. You can choose between 4 and 11 letters, and you can change the difficulty settings. We thought it’d be fun to include this one since so many people seem to be playing the game. Head to the website and try out Hello Wordl for yourself. WARNING: may eat hours of your time. If that’s the case, then probably use AnotherPomodoro!

Release Radar January

Well, that’s all for this month’s top release picks. Congratulations to everyone who shipped a new release, whether it was version 1.0 or version 11.0. Keep up the great work! If you missed our last Release Radar, check out the amazing community projects from December.

We hope these releases inspire you to get involved in open source or update your latest project. If you are working on an open source project and shipping a major version soon, we’d love to hear from you. Check out our new Release Radar repository, and submit your project to be featured.

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Written by

Michelle Mannering

Michelle Mannering

@MishManners

I'm a Content Producer working in tech & innovation. Known as the “Hackathon Queen” 👑 I'm on the GitHub DevRel team and love sharing stories from our amazing community of developers.

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