The next version of Octopress is packed full of awesome improvements. Octopress will change massively to be more extensible and customizable while still being as powerful and easy as ever; as such, this update has been in development for a long time, still not having released officially.
In anticipation of this update, I periodically check the Octopress Twitter for news and have encountered many release date estimates. Estimating time for development is notoriously difficult, so I’ve compiled a lighthearted Twitter history of Octopress 2.0’s successor and its estimated release dates.
The follow-up to Octopress 2.0 was originally envisioned as a much smaller set of changes to be called Octopress 2.1. The release of this version was first mentioned in March of 2012 as “soon”.
That will be shipping in 2.1 (soon).
— @octopress March 27, 2012
By May, the outlook for Octopress 2.1 was looking good enough that its release seemed imminent, within a “day or two”.
Have you tried 2.1 yet? I’m hoping to release it in the next day or two.
— @octopress May 23, 2012
But it was not to be! A week and a half later, in June, 2.1 was still looking as though it would release “soon”.
2.1 should be releasing soon. It has lots of goodies and fixes.
— @octopress June 3, 2012
Next month, July, enough progress had been made to offer a new estimate that 2.1 would release in a “week or two”.
It’ll be released once I finish a couple of remaining features. I’m hoping that’ll be in the next week or two.
— @octopress July 2, 2012
It was not until 4 months later in November that the next estimation was made that 2.1 would be released before the end of 2012.
I can’t give a solid date right now. But I expect to have a release before years end.
— @octopress November 14, 2012
With an acknowledgement of the difficulty in estimating, by January 2013 Octopress 2.1 was predicted to be completed “soon”.
We’re working on an asset pipeline, fixing any critical bugs and setting up a migration for 2.0. It’s hard to estimate, but soon.
— @octopress January 10, 2013
In February, it seemed that the eagerly awaited update would be finalized within a “month or two”.
right now [the 2.1 branch is] not entirely stable. We’re working on a few large features then we’ll release it in the next month or two.
— @octopress February 8, 2013
With the tremendous amount of effort that had gone into the update, it seemed more fitting that the major version change, so it would instead be released as Octopress 3.0.
By March, this 3.0 update’s release date was further clarified to “mid April”.
Right now, 2.1 is under pretty active development. We’re shooting for a mid April release, so it might be a good idea to wait.
— @octopress March 20, 2013
My mid April, though, it seemed more likely that the release would occur later in the month.
[The next release is] in flux right now. We’re hoping for late April.
— @octopress April 15, 2013
Although an April release had been missed, by late May it seemed that there would be a 3.0 release candidate available within a “month or so”.
We’re currently working through getting some core functionality working, but I’ll be announcing an RC in the next month or so.
— @octopress May 27, 2013
At the end of June, the ambitious Octopress 3.0 was still predicted to arrive during the summer.
[3.0 is] Going well. We’re targeting a summer release, still lots to do though. :)
— @octopress June 30, 2013
And so we still anticipate the official release of this update that will redefine Octopress. This does showcase a neat benefit of open source; despite not being officilly released, you can try out 3.0 and closely follow its development on GitHub.
Regardless of Octopress’ history of imprecise estimates, I have great faith in its developers to deliver such an ambitious update. I’ll keep an eye out on Twitter for an announcement that Octopress 3.0 has finally been perfected!
Update (Aug 18, 2013): By the end of July, there was still “a ways to go” on Octopress 3.0, but version 2.1 of Octopress was resurrected as a smaller, incremental upgrade on the way to Octopress 3.0.
we still have a ways to go. Right now I’m working on 2.1 which adds support for Jekyll 1.0 and uses Guard for watching files.
— @octopress July 27, 2013
Update (Feb 15, 2014): In September, Octopress 3.0 still wasn’t ready for release, but it seemed mature enough that a blog post was promised detailing the roadmap leading up to its release.
We’ve finally nailed it down. Blog post coming soon after @imathis gets back from BlendConf.
— @octopress September 4, 2013
Despite it originally being anticipated that this blog post would be published within a week, by mid October there were still details to be ironed out.
There’s a draft. Still ironing out some details. :)
— @octopress October 21, 2013
By the new year, it appeared that version 3.0 was still “a couple of months” away from being released.
The update is coming with Octopress 3.0 (which is probably a couple of months out) you should be able to migrate content easily.
— @octopress January 7, 2014
It also appears that the previously proposed version 2.1 was abandoned, so no new version is slated before Octopress 3.0.