Hi :) To put it as simply as possible ...
A new branch starts off full of new stuff and some of that new stuff might cause unexpected problems on some machines. There is no way around it. It's not possible to test a new program on all possible combinations of hardware, OSes, programs and configurations. During alpha and beta testing the new release is tested on as many systems as reasonably possible. More people could help with that by running pre-release versions early on and reporting back any issues. I try to but never seem to have the time and never really try out many different features anyway. So, the x.x.0 gets released and people start using it and reporting back some of the issues they find with it. Some of those along with "known issues" and even obscure issues get fixed. Instead of doing little updates every couple of days, like some programs do, these all get wrapped up into the next release, the x.x.1 rinse and repeat to get the x.x.2 and again for the x.x.3 At this point most people say the branch is about as stable as possible so it starts being called stable branch. However nothing new has been added for some time and some people have lots of exciting new ideas or have been working on something for years and finally got it working, others have been getting bored and started looking at other projects to get involved with to do more exciting things there. So, while a lot of the devs stick with bug-fixes there are also a lot that move to an even newer branch. So we have x.x.4 = now called stable branch although earlier release in the same branch are not any more stable than they were before x.y.0 = newer branch then both branches develop alongside each other for a while giving us x.x.5 = stable x.y.1 = new(ish) and then x.x.6 = very stable x.y.2 = getting there for the 1st time ever we ended up getting x.x.7 = very stable x.y.3 = stable x.z.0 = new branch all at the same time. Normally we don't bother with the .7 but the end of the 3.blah.blah was a bit momentous. ( 3 has been around for years and years and moving to the 4 meant some significant changes. I hadn't realised about the desktop-integration being pulled in and probably missed all the other changes too. I was more concerned about java&accessibility issues but i think Stuart informed us that the newer java-access-bridge does now work with the newer LO releases. So people don't need to stick with the 3.6.x branch to get their screen-readers working. ) Of course that is a bit simplistic. The x.y.0 includes all the fixes that go into the x.x.4(ish) and maybe more as well. However because of all the new stuff it might also suffer (or benefit from) regressions, some old problem might re-emerge, some new issues might arise. "You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs". Also the x.z.0 might introduce some "killer feature" that you just can't do without. It's often better to start with a x.z.0 release because if you do find flaws and post bug-reports it catches the most devs attention and it's the point where the least number of users are posting bug-reports. You are something like >25% more likely to get your pet-peeves dealt with at that time than at any other time or for any other release. So, the 3.6.7 is extremely stable. The 4.0.3 and now the 4.0.4 'should be' plenty stable enough that hardly anyone has problems. I gather the 4.0.3 was a bit of a let down but the 4.0.4 made up for that. We 'should' initially try the 4.1.0 on our own machines but roll out the 4.0.4 (or wait for the 4.0.5) for machines that need to be stable. Of course of the 4.1.0 has no problems in your environment then roll that one out. It should be stable enough for almost every set-up even though stability is not it's main aim. Regards from Tom :) -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
