I hope I'm not coming across as negative or petty. As explained below,
I think there's a real issue here that we would do well to address now.
Janne Jalkanen wrote:
We have testers? That's news to me...
The thing is - we can't force anyone to test anything. So it really
all comes down to volunteers. We can make policies and plans, but
unless we have people executing them, they don't matter.
I didn't suggest that you have forced or should try to force anything.
Perhaps the problem is me - that after all this time, I don't properly
understand what the adjective 'stable' really implies. Certainly, it's
very desirable to be constantly evolving new features; that's what the
2.5.xx series was for. Yet, I think we would all agree that we also
need a dependable version that people can use immediately, which is, I
assume(d) is what 2.4.xx was all about.
The issue (and from reading your comment, I do think it is an issue) is
what can the user of a stable version expect from the next stable
(non-major) version? Certainly, at a minimum, what we should do is
define what parts of the original stable version 'break' when shifting
to the new version (rather than have them pop up after release about an
issue which has been known for months). Ideally, this would be
accompanied by a smooth and simple upgrade of some sort. I mean, what's
the point of having those who want to immediately use the product be
directed to a stable version which is more or less guaranteed not to be
compatible with the next stable version?
I have a set of plugins I do test against (and they are working nicely
in 2.6 and 2.4). I can't say anything about anyone else.
Excellent point. So, at least as far as those particular plugins are
concerned, testing for 2.4.xx was done (at least by you). Why not
include things like filters as well? And why not make these part of a
standard set of compatibility tests?
The thing is, most people don't care until they realize that there's a
new stable out there. Then they try it, and then they see things
broken. This could take months, if they have no problems with the
existing stable. And we have no way of knowing what they are doing
with the software, so we can't even check for it.
I do understand and appreciate the problem you mention above. However,
I think it's a reasonable thing to announce a new stable version on the
discussion list and leave it up to users to upgrade or take their
chances later.
Jumping from 2.4 to 2.6 means that new stuff gets added, and
compatibility MAY be broken in minor ways (the PageFilter one is a
minor incompatibility, as filters can be fixed in about two minutes as
there is no behaviour change.
Well, that's part of my question: are the incompatibilities all minor,
and if so, how do you know that (if there's no effort made to map 2.4
into 2.6)? Even more fundamentally, what are all the known
incompatibilities? And, as for the two minute estimate, that assumes
you know about the incompatibility; tracing down the bizzare behavior
that might result can, as you know, consume a lot more time than that.
Jumping from 2.x to 3.0 means that compatibility WILL be broken,
unless by miraculous chance it works.
I understand that in making a major version change, some
incompatibilities are expected and reasonable. (I do wonder, however,
if we will continue parallel development paths as we did in 2.4.xx and
2.5.xx? See following comment)
Unfortunately, we don't have a systematic way of checking
against compatibility. This is something I would really like someone
to pick up.
Yes, I think that's the bottom line. While I do understand and
appreciate the reasoning between the 2.4xx/2.5xx parallel development, I
now wonder if that doesn't make compatibility extraordinarily
difficult. Yet, we also want to continue feature development. I don't
know how to best reconcile these objectives.
