Release Schedules and Feedback on Fixes

[Ruslan Zasukhin]

On 12/06/15 3:10 PM, "Robert Brenstein" <rjb at robelko.com> wrote:

> Ruslan, let me remind you that this is not a new complaint, or better
> said a request. I have been around long enough to know that this was
> requested a few times during the active life of V1. In the earlier
> development of V2, branching would slow things down indeed, but V2 is
> now mature enough and feature-complete enough to bring the issue of
> branching and thus continuing direct support of public releases back.
> Yes, it boils down to continued direct support of public releases. We
> are not asking for anything really special. This is an industry
> standard practice, followed by majority commercial software
> developers.

Okay, lets all together try plan it and see how it works :-)
 

> Let me be very explicit with what I mean. If you branch 2.5 now and
> keep fixing its bugs, by the time 2.6 is publicly released, the
> 2.5.5, 2.5.9 or whatever release of the 2.5 branch should be really
> stable, as in no known bugs.

But if 2.6 is expected to be in 15-20 days only?

I can understand what you say if 2.6 could take 3-6 months.
This is what is going to be for 3.0.

They yes 100% agree:
    * we ship 2.6 as last 2.x release with major fixes.
    * we branch it 
        - and start development SIGNIFCANT new features.
        - may be we will need yet ship 2.6.x during this months.

With such plan I agree. Do you ?


> This means that when 2.6 is officially released, we can also branch our
> products easily: we can continue to support version based on 2.5 technology
> while developing version based on 2.6 technology (we could have been doing
> that all along if participating in the beta program).

> Eventually comes 2.7. Now, if
> there is no compelling reason (like a new feature) for my moving my
> specific product to 2.6 or 2.7, I can keep it with Valentina 2.5 and
> be happy.

And here main trap:

    what if YOU find new bug in 2.5 build AFTER 2.7 is released?

    you will ask us make 2.5.1?
    I believe any company do not do this.
    they fix bug in 2.7.1 and say you - upgrade to 2.7.1, right?

    of course such bug most probably is minor, so you did not see
    it during your testing/use of 2.5....

>  You may not be happy that I am staying with an older
> version but you should be happy that I am happy and continue using
> Valentina. 

> Sooner or later I switch to the newer version.

> The complaint is really that as things are now, we don't have this luxury of
> settling ourselves with a specific Valentina technology release because its
> support is effectively dropped as soon as you move to working on the next
> release.

About dropped ... Well, can I ask Microsoft fix a bug in Visual 2003 C++ ?
Today exists Visual 2005. I think they never will do that. Am I right?

I think I understand what you say. And I think I remember the BIG change in
1.x when we have introduce record locks. This have break existed code. You
have point me that this is bad that new incremental update do such big
changes in API/behavior.

My understand is that on that moment we was need say: this is a 2.0 version
- major release. Instead we still MANY YEARS did slow 1.x incrementing.

-- 
Best regards,

Ruslan Zasukhin
VP Engineering and New Technology
Paradigma Software, Inc

Valentina - Joining Worlds of Information
http://www.paradigmasoft.com

[I feel the need: the need for speed]