Happy New Year 2026! 🎉

Starting the year right with some housekeeping and infrastructure updates. I just ran a full bundle update on the site to bring all dependencies current while maintaining GitHub Pages compatibility.

Package Updates Completed

Here’s what got updated in today’s maintenance cycle:

Core Dependencies

  • nokogiri: 1.18.10 → 1.19.0 (HTML/XML parser)
  • activesupport: 8.1.1 → 8.1.2 (Rails core extensions)
  • concurrent-ruby: 1.3.5 → 1.3.6 (concurrency utilities)
  • bigdecimal: 3.3.1 → 4.0.1 (arbitrary-precision decimal)
  • json: 2.15.2 → 2.18.0 (JSON parser)
  • minitest: 5.26.0 → 6.0.1 (testing framework)

Network & HTTP

  • net-http: 0.7.0 → 0.9.1 (HTTP client)
  • faraday-net_http: 3.4.1 → 3.4.2 (Faraday adapter)
  • faraday-retry: 2.3.1 → 2.4.0 (retry middleware)
  • http_parser.rb: 0.8.0 → 0.8.1 (HTTP parser)
  • dnsruby: 1.73.0 → 1.73.1 (DNS resolver)
  • addressable: 2.8.7 → 2.8.8 (URI implementation)

Infrastructure

  • connection_pool: 2.5.4 → 3.0.2 (connection pooling - major version bump!)
  • ffi: 1.17.2 → 1.17.3 (foreign function interface)
  • webrick: 1.9.1 → 1.9.2 (HTTP server)
  • uri: 1.1.0 → 1.1.1 (URI utilities)
  • i18n: 1.14.7 → 1.14.8 (internationalization)
  • prism: (new addition - Ruby parser)

The GitHub Pages Landscape in 2026

While many gems have newer versions available (Jekyll 4.4.1, Kramdown 2.5.1, etc.), this site intentionally uses the github-pages gem bundle, which locks dependencies to match GitHub’s deployment environment. This ensures:

  • Build consistency between local development and production
  • Zero deployment surprises when pushing to the sources branch
  • Automatic compatibility with GitHub Pages infrastructure

Running bundle exec jekyll doctor confirms everything is healthy: ✅

What’s Next

The site continues to evolve with:

  • Custom Bootstrap 5 integration (completed July 2025)
  • Dark/light theme toggle with localStorage persistence
  • Bootstrap Icons throughout the UI
  • Automated CI/CD via GitHub Actions

This blog serves as both a personal platform and a testing ground for modern Jekyll patterns. Looking forward to more experiments in 2026!

Site built with Jekyll 3.10.0, deployed via GitHub Pages from the sources branch to markhazleton.com