Development Cycles

Radon3k

I've always been curious as to how a development cycle progresses. As in when it moves from the Alpha stage to the Beta stage and into the RC stage. What goes into each stage (Is Alpha for major fixes and new features? Is Beta for minor fixes? Is RC as "last check"?) Thanks. 🙂

LordShryku

Depends who you talk to. Bill Gates' answer will be different from Linus Torvalds'

Radon3k

Isn't there some sort of basic "industry standard"? Not an exact one but just a general one that most people follow?

drawmack

industry standard is that

alpha - in house (here anything including specs can change)
beta - large scale test (here only bugs should be fixed)
RC - should be stable.

If you're microsoft then remove alpha and incerement all the definitions to the next term.

Radon3k

Thanks, that helps. What about version numbers? How do they progress? I see some programs that are 0.68 and others as 1.2.

Tristan_Wells

Alpha would be something freshly coded that has tons of bugs you need to fix before releasing it to your members. A team release would qualify as an alpha release.

Beta is usualy a first public release. It still has quite a few bugs but its not as bad as the aformentioned alpha release. Your still in the bug fixing period at this point.

Release Canidate is the final level of development one version of a script can reach. It basicly means a majority of the bugs in that particular version of the software have been fixed and the software is stable enough to be used.

As for the version control system. Its supposed to be something like this.
1.0.0
1: Major Changes - Large scale changes to the software.
0: Minor Changes - Small scale changes to the software, such as an important patch.
0: Revisions - Changing part of the software to be the same as a previous version.

Few software developers use this system anymore though. Invision Power Board for instance was recoded completly in XHTML1.0 and the version still only went up one for minor change.

Radon3k

Thanks for the explanation, that makes a lot of sense. 🙂

LordShryku

Yeah, the version control is all about choice anymore. Take Red Hat for example

From 7.2 to 7.3 to 8.0 to 9(no suffix). Wanting to get the point accross that they made huge strides from 7.3 to 8.0, they jumped a number. Then again, to make the point of huge strides, they went to 9. Next version: Fedora

drawmack

well a fedora is a type of hat and the hat is worn on the apex of the body, maybe they are telling us that it aint going to git eny better then that. 🙂

LordShryku

Well, Red Hat seems to be the people pushing the envelope trying to bring Linux to the desktop. And as far as I read, Fedora is supposed to push that a lil farther. And with MS saying that it's next release will try to force automatic updates to people, along with all the embedded DRM talk, it'll be interesting to see where this goes. I recently just put RH9 on this box as a desktop, put in KDE 3.1, got all my karambas and other eye candy going, sat back and thought "Ya know, no one else's desktop looks like this. This is how I want my desktop to look, and it's done". I think if more "users" knew they could do that, Linux might be more popular. Of course, maybe I'm just a geek 😃

Merve

M$ used version numbers, got bored, switched to years, got bored again, then switched to weird names such as XP and .NET and Longhorn.

Weedpacket

Examples:
A major version number change sometimes indicates a complete rewrite (or the fact that so many changes had been made it has virtually been rewritten); a minor version number change indicates changes (new features, rearrangements, but the core remains pretty much intact); subversion numbers increment with each bugfix release.

The Linux kernel numbering system distinguishes between "stable" builds and "development" builds: if you just want to be an end-user you'd pick a stable build, while if you don't mind bleeding a little the development builds are more current and have more code in them for debugging purposes. They're distinguished by their minor version numbers: even for stable (e.g., 1.2.x, 2.4.x), and odd for development (1.3.x, 2.1.x). (Here: here's the official word on the Linux kernel version numbering scheme).

(Internet Explorer: Version 6.0.2800.1106.spxp2.030422-1633)

Merve

Originally posted by Weedpacket

(Internet Explorer: Version 6.0.2800.1106.spxp2.030422-1633)

I'd bet you anything they added all those digits for effect 🙂

Weedpacket

Originally posted by Merve
I'd bet you anything they added all those digits for effect 🙂

Major version: 6
Minor version: 0
Bugfix release: 2800 (sounds about right 🙂)

There's a bit in there covering "service pack", but what are the rest? Any suggestions?

Moonglobe

daily build #s?

Merve

Originally posted by Moonglobe
daily build #s?

The rest is probably just a whole bunch of bulls**t. What really matters is 6.0.2800, and the 2800 is probably not even that important. 6.0 is the key thing here.

bad76

Originally posted by Weedpacket
Major version: 6
Minor version: 0
Bugfix release: 2800

but what are the rest? Any suggestions?

Bug fixed in this SP: 1106
spxp2: service pack 2 for XP
yymmdd: 22 Apr 2003
Wellknow bugs remainings to fix: 1633

Maybe? 😃

I think 2800 is a 2.8.00, 1106 is 1.1.06, 1633 is 1.6.33
All these versioning number are referred to some kind of
shared resource inside to microsoft.

A shared resource maybe a library, a kernel build, or a teams.
2.8.00 for programmers
1.1.06 for debuggers (Alpha Team)
1.6.33 for debuggers (Beta Team = we 😃)

HEY, BILL! If you hear, post there the rigth answer!
...
...
Not, he can't hear me... luckily 😉