>From the XCsoar news group:
Hi, I've uploaded a new (unofficial) XCSoar 6.0 pre-release build: http://max.kellermann.name/download/xcsoar/nightly/latest/ There have been nearly 400 changes since the last "stable" build (2010-05-17). <snip>... XCSoar has been fairly stable in the past weeks, only the FLARM dialog caused a crash once when I clicked on the details of another glider - I could not figure out this bug yet, because it won't happen in my debugging environment. For this reason, the new build is not marked as "stable", but I hope we'll have a new "stable" build by next week. Max From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Scott Penrose Sent: Wednesday, 4 August 2010 11:48 AM To: Discussion of issues relating to Soaring in Australia. Subject: Re: [Aus-soaring] iStuff On 04/08/2010, at 10:20 AM, Derek Ruddock wrote: It's amusing following the XCSoar development. Almost every week there is a new 'stable' version. The last one included 700 changes, and was followed almost immediately by another 'b' version and then by a 'c' version to fix yet another bug. There has not been a "stable" version of XCSoar released for a long time now (over a year). Not sure where you are getting that concept from. We are releasing nightly alpha builds, and occasionally milestones. We are working hard on releasing the first version of this new branch soon. It will be called 6.0 One of the differences between a closed source application (like See you) is you don't see these nightly builds and beta releases. You only see the final, and a limited run beta occasionally. Where as an open source application releases to the public all builds, no matter what progress. So if you want "stable" you need to use 5.2.4 - released last on 5/August/2009. Software development works like this - you branch to a new release, you develop on that, continuing to make changes. You have milestones where we release something that compiles and passes some basic testing - these are the regular releases, but not the nightly ones, then the nightly builds may not pass tests even at all. Finally after your branch gets complete (eg you finish features you want, and bugs etc) you then make an alpha version - this is likely to still have issues. Finally when you "think" you are ready to release, you release a beta - this is a version that you think you can go stable with, but it is beta, because we are often wrong. Once it passes that beta testing, you release a stable version. This is how most applications are developed, and you are confusing seeing what would be an internal process for a closed source project with how open source works. You can also see this is other open source projects, if you live on the edge :-) e.g. you can download nightly builds of Firefox. Scott
_______________________________________________ Aus-soaring mailing list [email protected] To check or change subscription details, visit: http://lists.internode.on.net/mailman/listinfo/aus-soaring
