Question Never again publicly release alpha test version

johnnydement wrote:

Although you may feel this is the safest aproach for your testing enviroment, testing env. is for that and we really need the feedback from it, so if you want fast and stable development, please, "risk" your TESTING ENVIROMENT, NEVER LIVE SITES, and help us get there faster

I have taken the plunge with a 2nd Testing environment now fully dedicated to 1.5a only testing

Before I start posting errors/issues/advice/screams of pain or joy I think there needs to be a seperate 1.5a testing catagory to keep 1.08/1.09 errors and 1.5 errors seperate and help reduce confussion.

BTW - keep up the outstanding work Dev team - I can't believe how far this has come in such a short time frame.

As always we thank all of you for you candid feedback.

However, we do believe that there is a place for alpha versions to be made available to a larger audience, our community. Most major open source projects have a concept of public alpha versions. I encourage you to check out apache.org. Do a search for alpha and you will find alpha version for download for many of its projects.

I strongly disagree with the dumb statement. It is the wrong way to look at this challenge. While we need to be able to deploy alpha versions, we need a way of better communicating with our users right there on this downloads page.
We want to leverage joomlacode.org as a central hub for our SVN and software downloads. It comes with some limitations that we have not yet overcome. If anything it is our fault for not having a better separation between Alpha and Stable releases on that very same downloads page.

What we really need is help to come up with smarter ways on how to leverage joomlacode.org for downloads so that it is clear to every single visitor what they are getting by downloading a particular package.

The easiest thing would be to modify that page and insert custom formatted text and colors around the various version sections. Unfortunately that's not a supported option. As such we need to look into alternatives.

Sure we could offer our own fancy download packages and that problem would go away as quickly as it came. But we too want to be part of a larger community and as such want to leverage joomlacode.org for that purpose.

Yes - we are all learning. The day we stop doing that will make our work meaningless.

I hope I was able to explain another side to the story.

Have a great day!

fxstein

For your amusement:

Eh..

I don't know, if you download something that says "do not use this for production purposes" and do so anyway, then you have to deal with the results.

Personally, I'd rather have the ability to download an alpha release given the opportunity to do so, because if there is something critical in it that I need I'd love to have the option to have it.

In this case, I downloaded and installed 1.09. I'm content with it. I haven't yet looked at the alpha version, and I probably won't look at the beta version either unless it has something I really want.

I realize there are some people who are going to download an alpha release to their detriment and be upset, but I think in the end, those people help kunena move forward because using alpha in a production environment probably generates better bug reports. They'll learn not to do that kind of thing again of course.

@sozzled man you are so not unfriendly today *wink* - but at least you are very much truthful *thumb up*.

The problem isn't that the alpha release was available to public, it is the way it was announced. When I went to search JED I found it in the same place with the stable version, and I guess that many people were so very excited that they didn't even read (or... read what they wanted to read) before downloading or didn't understand the terminology *cough* n00bs *cough* - something that was not considered - as JED is mainly an RC+ level software source.

Usually all alpha releases are published separately (available to all but in a different section). Publishing a stable and an alpha test on the same page and same occasion is the best recipe for the mess that had just happened. (Imagine doing that on a Ubuntu release lmao)

Anyways, keep positive man, I am very sure same mistake will not happen twice.
*Cheers* for the developers and staff working! Can't wait till the betta appears (coz I cannot wait for the RC lol)

Kunena version:1.0.9 (last updated in 3rd april, 2009)


We stated clearly the version to use was 1.0.9, 1.05.a is not talked until nearly the end of the text... so I think we can't be any more clear, it also states clearly is a test version...

Kunena - The native Joomla Forum

The Kunena Team is proud to announce the immediate availability of Kunena 1.0.9. This is a security release and all users are urged to upgrade immediately.

This release addresses a number of issues. A legacy security issue inherited form the Fireboard installer has been fixed as well as pagination issues and RSS.

Highlights of the release include a new, powerful advanced search. Users can now customize their searching in a variety of ways, including authors & titles. A tight collaboration with the Community Builder team is also a great new feature which allows CB users to enjoy stronger integration than ever before.

Additionally, a large number of minor fixes and enhancements have been included in this release. Please see the Kunena Read Me for this release to view the full list of changes and improvements:

docs.kunena.com/index.php/Kunena_1.0.9_Read_Me

On top of the Kunena 1.0.9 release, the Kunena Team has been hard at work on a Kunena 1.5 release, which runs natively on Joomla 1.5.x. We are thrilled to announce the immediate availability of Kunena 1.5.0 Alpha. This is a test release which will automatically upgrade any Kunena 1.0.x installation to Kunena 1.5 and shouldn't be used on live production sites. We encourage users to test out this great new native version and provide us with feedback to make Kunena the best forum for Joomla.

Thank you for supporting our community!

The Kunena Tema
www.kunena.com