A note about version branches - Unclassified NewsBoard

Yves

(Administrator) 2006-11-08, 21:10 #1

User title: UNB developer & webmaster
Member since Jan 2004 · 3814 posts · Location: Erlangen, Germany
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Subject: A note about version branches

As publishing “stable” releases is more work, like updating a couple of web pages, version tracking stuff etc., it has become the trend that the current development version is in fact more stable and includes the latest bug fixes that the stable branch does not. I’m running the latest code version boards for a long time now and haven’t experienced serious trouble that wouldn’t also have happened with a stable version. So for now, you’re probably better off installing the current development snapshot version below. This is not yet reflected by the rest of the website. Eventually, the release scheme will change to a “continous integration” model.

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Current development version

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Nucleos 2006-11-11, 02:26 #2

Member since Oct 2006 · 4 posts · Location: Bretagne, France
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Why do you want to release continually? It seems weird to me not to pass through a validation process before releasing.

Yves

(Administrator) 2006-11-11, 18:35 #3

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Okay, so you want to do the testing and QA? There is done testing during development, of course. When I do something, I actually check that it works as expected. And only if that's the case, I make the code publically available. But you're right, there is no overall product testing other than what I do as board admin and user myself. The irony is in that I work for a software company just in the test automation tools, but I just don't have the necessary resources to do that correctly for this project. So I do it as good as I can, which heavily relies on clean and well-structured code and my knowledge about what change also affects what other code. By dropping the version branches, I just drop the "ability" to maintain several previous versions at the same time, i.e. integrating bug fixes to the older 1.5 branch, which I'm actually not doing anyway for some time.

♪ ...nanananah, all in all we’re just brilliant thieves, nanananah... ♪♬

airblaster (Guest) 2007-03-12, 11:42 #4

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I guess the real problem with not having version numbers is that it is a lot harder to provide support to the users.
If you have a version number, the problems of this version will be well known after a while, and maybe even workarounds will be provided by the users.
If you do not have the time to document the changes, why not release an "undocumented stable beta" with a version number every few months or so?

Yves

(Administrator) 2007-03-12, 17:24 #5

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What is so different with release dates than version numbers? Instead of calling the next release "1.6.4" I could as well call it "20070320" (hypothetically). Instead of referring to the next release at this moment as "1.6.4", I'd need to stick with "the next release". But if somebody has a problem with version "20051123", I'd recommend to upgrade to the latest version as it will have a whole lot of bugfixes since then and possibly this new one might be one of them. If I really supported bug reports for each previous version, I'd need to keep my knowledge about past versions up-to-date and provide solutions for versions that have been superceded by three others. I'd need to provide bug fixes for older versions that I have already integrated in the newer ones. This can be exponentially more work that just having a single, current version that gets all the fixes.

Some of them may be tagged "experimental", it's up to the user to install it or not. A version check would probably distinguish between those two types. Those experiments include new and not thoroughly tested features or changes that are likely to break normal operation if something goes wrong. And one day, those changes are either stabilised or sufficiently isolated from the rest and made optional, to recommend them for every user.

♪ ...nanananah, all in all we’re just brilliant thieves, nanananah... ♪♬