Re: Euphoria Release Cycles
- Posted by jeremy (admin) Jan 05, 2011
- 1199 views
Psychologically (for the average user) a message in his email generated automatically by your server with an announcement of a new release (about every 3-5 weeks), is the greatest incentive for him to keep on downloading the latest version and checking. The seasoned user might know that there is hardly any change worth looking at, but the technique is effective and works to create an aura (illusion?) of activity. For example, I would have expected after 3.1, 3.1.4, 3.1.4.3, 3.1.5, 3.1.7, 3.1.8, 3.1.9, 3.1.9.2 etc etc before the start of 4.0 Beta etc I look at about 8 different Euphoria level of programming sites and this is the technique they use. I don't consider it immoral. Certainly it is more moral than announcing a release 6-20 months before it is due (as IBM used to do in the 80s and 90s.
I'm not sure what you are trying to say here, but the 2 month cycle for releases is not to create an illusion of activity. It's to create consistency. There have already been bug fixes to 4.0 which will benefit some people and there have been a few methods added to the standard library that were found to be missing on 4.0 releases. By the time 4.0.1 is ready to be released, there are some 30 methods that will have been added, quite a few document fixes a few new features and who knows what other bugs will be found/fixed before that time arrives.
The 4.0 release took a little more than 1/2 a day to release. Building all the sources, compiling for the platforms, updating download sites, uploading packages, switching operating systems, compiling on new operating systems, etc... You can be rest assured I am not going through all that work to release a new version of Euphoria that includes 1 bug fix and 1 new method. If release time comes and that's all that is in the queue for deployment, here on the forum a prompt message will appear stating no release will be made (unless of course it's a monsterous bug affecting a wide range of applications/people, if that's the case a bug release will be made ASAP, prior to the 2 month deploy point).
In reality what it does is provide incentive for developers to keep on track. We know a release is coming up and we know ABC and XYZ should be completed for that release. .z releases will always contain some things of value for the users. Now, maybe 4.0.2 is released and it contains the FTP, STMP, POP3 and IMAP libraries. That's a serious amount of code, but maybe you don't use any networking at all. Sure, that release will be of nothing to you, but Euphoria serves more than one person. I for one would be estatic to get an FTP library because I rely on it quite a bit in a few applications for my work. A release such as the one just stated, I'd be jumping for joy for while someone else may say "Huh? Why bother releasing?"
Jeremy
