Sometimes You Have to Cut Your Losses and Ship

Its always difficult to step back and re-evaluate a project after working many hours on it. You don’t want to think you wasted all of that time, to throw it away. But sometimes you must think hard about what you are doing, and whether its for the best.

I reached that point over the weekend. SMART Utility hasn’t been updated in nearly a year, and that was not my plan. I had some contract work that took me six months, which ended in January. I began work on version 3.1 of SMART Utility, which had some major work required. I had a few medium features completed, when I started work on the major feature in April- a rewritten operation of the main window.

I wanted to have a version out by now, so that I could begin work on a Mountain Lion compatible version. And with the release less than a month away, I was stressing out about completing it on time. The new major feature was taking too long. And while it is going to be nice to have, its not a necessity. Getting SMART Utility working on ML is, however.

So I made a hard decision to stop work on the new feature. I branched off the code to version 3.2. I reverted the 3.1 code to the point prior to the work on the main window. (I love git BTW!) It wasn’t easy to decide to do that, but I felt relieved about doing so.

So I hope to have 3.1 out in the next week or so. Its a nice upgrade, but not what I imagined. But that’s okay, I know my customers will be happy to have a new version (with email notifications!!). And I can start work on getting it fully supported under Mountain Lion. I don’t know if 3.1 will be compatible with 10.8, or if it will require 3.2. That really depends on how much work is required. However, 3.1 will be the last version supported under 10.5. Version 3.2 will require 10.6.

So stay turned for more news!