tl;dr: Alexandrite now has version numbers, new official docker images are built only when publishing a new release instead of with every change to the main branch, currently 0.7.0 is the only/newest version (if you’re using latest that’s fine, it’ll keep pointing to the newest version too). Now you’ll find a version number at the bottom of the “About Alexandrite” page. Alexandrite.app continues to run the latest code from the main branch.

For the technically inclined who want more background: the official site, alexandrite.app, has always been built off the main branch with auto-deploys. I can find a bug and within 5 minutes alexandrite.app can be updated with my fix. It’s really convenient because if I deploy something then realize I missed an edge case I can just fix it quick and probably not very many people were ever impacted.

When I first added self-hosting support I just made it publish images based on changes to main, and planned to add proper version numbers soon after (which I’ve now done). Now knowing people are self hosting using my docker images, and since I don’t control how quickly fixes are deployed or when they update, I’ve needed to be extra cautious to make sure everything works perfectly the first time (or as close as I can manage by myself). I just want to avoid a scenario where I release a big update at 6:00PM, notice a bug and fix it by 6:05PM, but someone’s self-hosted instance updates daily at 6:03PM and now that instance has to live with that bug for the next day.

That’s why I made this change. The main site can be the “bleeding edge” and then the official docker image releases might be slightly behind and hopefully be slightly more stable.

Besides that, I’ve been thinking about creating somewhere to chat and share news/ideas of Alexandrite updates besides just this community. Thinking about making either a Discord server or a room on Matrix. Thoughts?