Laravel 8.49, weekly updates, and 🔥 tip

Laravel 8.49

A couple patch releases last week, and a few new features this week brings us to 8.49.0.

Here are the highlights:

  • Add statusText method to HTTP Response in #37795
  • Make sure availableIn returns positive value in #37809
  • Pass factory sequence instance into closure in #37799
  • Add resolution order to route:list command in #37824
  • Add context to subsequent logs in #37847

You may review the full branch diff on GitHub for a complete list of changes.

This minor version bump and update is automated for subscribers to a Shifty Plan. If you don't have one of those, be sure to bump your constraint and run composer update to get the latest features.

Weekly Journal

Last week I completed the outstanding Human Shifts. This included a couple applications coming all the way from Laravel 4.2 and a few from Laravel 5.5. While I had a lot come in at once, it's still fun to work on these as it allows me to not only use Shift more, but see how long-lived applications grow over time.

Jess and I also finalized some remaining features for the alpha version of the soon to be released Shift Workbench desktop application. These included some onboarding screens as well as improved output for the new tasks.

I hope to release an alpha version tomorrow. Rather quietly though as this is a distributed application across multiple platforms and operating systems with an underlying Docker dependency. All that is to say I expect there to be some issues and I'd like to discover those before more users download the app.

To that point, I plan to use the rest of the week to support the Workbench launch. I'll likely do more live streams and make a marketing video for the "official" launch.

I also took some time last week to reflect on Shift. Mainly starting a product timeline on Indie Hackers. I only got to 2019, but plan to fill in the rest over the next few weeks.

I wanted to reflect after Shift hit a revenue milestone early this year which proves it's continuing to grow. Something I was concerned about with Laravel's move to an annual release cycle.

I'm sometimes reluctant to share these milestones. While I try to keep it positive, it can be perceived differently. In addition, we are in a community of giants and a fast-growth industry. Yet, I feel that makes it more important to share these things. Especially because Shift falls in the "middle" - not a new service, yet not a crazy successful one either. The harsh truth is most projects fail, or they take a while. Even then, it doesn't mean millions in revenue or a big exit.

In the end, that's not always what it is about. It might not even be what you want. Which is something I also reflect on after listening to the recent episode of Art of Product.

🔥 Tip

Not a direct code tip this week, but more of an app tip. I mentioned this before and even once released a package to help. The new route:list option and the Human Shifts reminded me of it.

Many applications have invalid routes. This not only creates dead code, but would prevent route caching in production. So, the 🔥 tip this week is to ensure you can run route:list successfully within your applications.