Release 0.2.0 was about trust. We tightened every path between the developer laptop and production by doubling down on container-first workflows, catch-all tests, and graceful fallbacks when infrastructure is missing.
What Shipped
- DB-less fallbacks keep dashboards, ticket views, and admin pages rendering even when a database connection drops—perfect for CI and smoke tests.
- Deterministic test harnesses give us an HTMX-friendly login flow, curated integration suites, and race-enabled coverage without brittle mocks.
- Toolbox-first automation ensures
maketargets spin in containers, respecting SELinux and local caching without leaking host dependencies. - Static analysis integration with
staticcheck, normalized error strings, and GOFLAGS enforcement caught regressions before they merged.
Why It Matters
Teams can now run make dev, make test, or make lint inside the toolbox without worrying about locally installed Go or database clients. CI mirrors the same setup, so a green build locally is a green build in the pipeline. Service outages are less scary because the UI keeps enough context available for operators to act.
What’s Next
The groundwork positioned us to focus on user experience next, culminating in the 0.3.0 release.
Bonus Track: Hardening Lessons
Supporting both PostgreSQL and MariaDB required reframing SQL placeholders and building guards around long-running migrations. We also had to prune dozens of nil-pointer panics across handlers so tests survive when external services are intentionally offline.