5.6 DEV build 2906

5.6 DEV build 2906

This dev build contains bugfixes, contributions and dependency updates that have been done since May. I would release it as a full release, but since my start of December is hectic, I want to avoid releasing a buggy version by accident.

Special thanks to YannicHock & Zaemong for contributions to this update.

There's a small development/life update at the bottom of the change log.

Change log

Commands [action required]

• /plan and /planproxy now require plan.command permission to be used. This is to allow hiding /plan from tab completion, since it showed up even if a player had no access to any of the subcommands.

Platform specific

• Fixed Nukkit incompatibility with EntityTameable being moved to a different package
• Fixed Folia ConcurrentModificationException related to ping task
• Fixed Folia region tick thread crash if another plugin was using Plan placeholders on server thread

Website

• Fixed some countries not appearing on the map due to missing country name -> ISO-3166 alpha-3 translation
• Added web permissions for different Server Perfomance graph data types. This allows configuring permissions for viewing TPS graph and nothing else.

Database

• Fixed CorrectWrongCharacterEncodingPatch applying to non-Plan tables in the same database.

Config

• Increased default time series data retention to 10 years (3650 days) - previously 90 days. Does not change existing configs.

Extensions

• CMI Extension added by YannicHock

Locale

• Fixed French (FR) locale causing website loading issues
• Japanese (JA) locale updated by Zaemong

Placeholders

• Catch any exceptions that occur during placeholder request to not cause problems in other plugins using Plan placeholders
• Added %plan_top_{category}_{n}_value_raw% placeholders for unformatted values (Useful for custom time formats)
• Added %plan_server_players_online% and %plan_network_players_online% placeholders that show the latest data in the database (~1 minute accuracy)

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Development/Life update

Plan is now 8 years old (tomorrow on 2nd of December)! Wow, that's almost third of my life.

I don't know how to begin this, but since the regular updates stopped coming in June, I feel like I need to write something to let you know why.

In June, as my summer holiday started I decided to leave my laptop at home, rather than take it with me and work on Plan all summer. This was the first time in 7 years that that happened. I didn't open the IDE again for a long time, and I kind of liked it. Unfortunately any 2 month long break from a project usually leads to the build environment breaking, so I've had to deal with some of that before I could get back to regular development.

Over last 4 months I've slowly worked on DataExtension Graph API on some weekends. It's surprising how much boilerplate something like that needs to function, so it's somewhere around 33%-50% done after 4 months in development. With long pauses in between due to needing to work on other bugs and broken builds, it has not progressed as fast as I would have liked.

People always seem to wonder why I'm doing this project, and I've wondered that too over the years. I sort of rationalized the reason to be that I love doing it - and that was true for years, as I love learning new things, and Plan allowed me to do those experiments to learn. Lately I've started to think that doing this project has also been a kind of escapism. Everyone wants to feel like they're good at something, and when I found programming in 2016, that was something I felt like I could be really good at. So I started this project, and found so much enjoyment from that. It's funny how life creeps up on you if you let it, Over these last two years I've started to find my people and hobbies. Those things give me so much joy in life.

I still enjoy working on this project, but I've found that doing Java projects at work, and doing Java project on the weekends is not a very sustainable hobby. I found that out the hard way when I had a burnout in 2022. In an ideal world I would love to work on this project full-time, but that's just not realistic financially.

I'm not sure what the way forward is, but what I'm currently trying is to schedule Plan development time in my calendar. I feel like something I need to solve is that other activities refresh my energy, while Plan development drains it. I need to find a way to make it refresh my energy. If you've solved something like that I'd love to hear your thoughts on discord.

All that said, I don't think this project is going away anytime soon. I'll just have to figure out a sustainable way to fit it together with the rest of my life. And that just might be the learning journey that sparks my eyes again.

I hope you have wonderful Christmas or other holidays ahead of you.
All the best!

~Aurora