Less frequent beta builds?

[Atque]

I notice since about December, beta builds have become much more rare. Before, they were released once a week (usually each Sunday), but now it sometimes takes several weeks before a beta is released, despite some awesome new features have been introduced.

Why is that?

[alex-w]

Hi! пт, 19 февр. 2021 г. в 16:20, Atque <notifications@github.com>:

I notice since about December, beta builds have become much more rare. Before, they were released once a week (usually each Sunday), but now it sometimes takes several weeks before a beta is released, despite some awesome new features have been introduced. Why is this?

I have less free time since January + no frequently publishing betas now because no need for many snapshots when code in master is almost not changed. For example Georg introduced many changes but it was made in a separate branch (yes, the branch has been merged now and I'll prepare new binary packages this weekend).

…

-- With best regards, Alexander

[alex-w]

Alex, your proposal is not acceptable here by various reasons - at least because we use git and we follow the "rolling release" model by the fact. Your proposal was good for "classic release" model, using subversion as a CVS and tens of developers in team and this was good 15-20 years ago, but not today. I don't want spend all my free time by copying a tens identical patches between tens almost identical branches and producing a tens almost identical binary packages from these branches.

Please do not touch versioning scheme in Stellarium, because your previous suggestions and requirements was causes ruining the building Windows packages and now we need to use two (!) versioning schemes for produce packages for all platforms.

[alex-w]

There is a button to check for updates in the F1/Help panel, and a "beta" button on the website. Uh, @alex-w there used to be one, why has it disappeared?

Nobody seen a "beta" button and nobody sees "weekly snapshots" link :)

[alex-w]

It could be more obvious, like in the first tab of the Configurations menu.

Why configuration menu is more obviously place for you to checking version of program instead of Help/About menu? O_O

[Atque]

@alex-w Because that's where you save your personal configurations. I think that window is more obvious to users, than a second tab under the Help window.

[gzotti]

Matter of taste. At least one major web brower updates in the About box accessible from the Help menu.

[axd1967]

• git is perfectly fit for the multiple maintenance branch approach. see Pro Git Book (although the explanation given there is far too complex for what I describe). a related concept from the git workflow is the hotfix branch. see also here and here and this classic.
• ten is indeed unfeasible, I did not suggest that. Keeping one or maybe two maintenance branches is perfectly feasible (it's the "up to the project team to decide how much releases can be supported in parallel" value). e.g. 0.20.2-maintenance and 0.20.4-maintenance are fine, and each time a new release is made, one older maintenance branch will be terminated; even better is to ask the community if there is a need at all to maintain more than one maintenance branch !). so there is no need to copy code to different branches. one fixes a bug in the affected version, then merges it where needed (into master, maybe in other maintenance branches).
• I'm not aware of version scheme suggestions that ruined Windows builds. (All I remember is that Windows requires a build number - in fact, Windows imposes a strict versioning scheme.).

just my 2c.