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HomeHomeOur CommunityOur CommunityGeneral Discuss...General Discuss...Are the monthly releases worth it?Are the monthly releases worth it?
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6/21/2010 9:04 PM
 
With the recent pulling of the 5.4.3 release due to an issue and looking at some of the other past monthly releases that also broke functionality/3rd party modules. I think it might be time to reassess the monthly release schedule.

Whilst I like the intention of monthly releases. They should undergo sufficient testing to ensure nothing breaks and not just the core provided services. And if there is a breaking change enough time and warning for the third party developers should be given.  This doesn't appear to be happening currently.  As a hoster I am seeing both an increased workload to update on a monthly cycle as well as increased support calls when things go wrong.

I would also be interested to hear from 3rd party module developers on their thoughts. I would think that they are currently spending a lot more time on checking (or trying to check) their modules for the monthly releases at the cost of developing new functionality.

As a suggestion would it be better to alternate between beta and production/stable releases on alternating months. Exception being if there is a security issue of sufficient import.

So what does everyone think?

Antony
 
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6/21/2010 10:12 PM
 
I would say I am not convinced that doing away with monthly releases would actually resolve any problems. We had quality issues before we did monthly releases or has everyone forgotten the 5.0 and the 5.1 releases?  In fact we spent more than 9 months with 5.0 in various stages of beta testing and we still had a significant number of issues that showed up on the day it was released.  In fact we are still dealing with a few issues that are the direct result of changes made in 5.0.

The problem we face is a breakdown on multiple levels.  I could move releases to once every 6 months but if our internal processes are not adequate to catch the bugs and we are not getting sufficient feedback from community members then it won't change the outcome.  At the end of the day the solution lies with all of us working together and doing our parts to ensure a successful release - whatever the frequency.  Part of the benefit of doing monthly releases is that there are fewer changes that have occured and fewer potential causes for failure.  In addition, when a failure does occur, it is much easier to isolate and fix the problematic code.

Joe Brinkman
DNN Corp.
 
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6/21/2010 10:52 PM
 
I agree with Joe on this one.  While there is always the chance that a release will have some major flaws in it, this is something that can be fixed by better quality assurance rather than slower release cycles.  The slower the release cycle, the more changes and the bigger the delta between releases.  As long as problems are found early and communicated well, I don't see the drawback of the occasionally DOA release based on regular releases.    If anything, the 5.0 release showed that until a release is put up live, most people don't test them.  If you've got a mission-critical app, then it pays to be a few releases behind and choose which one you want to move to carefully.

The difficult part of the equation is coming up with a solid QA system, and I suspect the eventual solution is a mix of widespread testing by third party app developers (something I know DNN corp is developing) and possibly automated QA/Smoke Test type situations.

The bottom line is that releasing new versions of a product with an install base in the 00,000's is always going to be difficult and there are going to be some problems. To me the solution is tying better automated and compatibility testing into the release process rather than slowing it down, which just puts more pressure on individual releases to be perfect because you have to wait longer to get them.
 
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6/21/2010 11:29 PM
 
While I just had some fun writing a comment to Joe's blog post all kidding aside I don't think the monthly releases are the problem either. I do think it's crazy to be updating PE with the same release as CE - those people are paying big $ for stable software. The DNN comedy of errors might not be too funny to them. CE should be the testing grounds for PE - that's kind of what we are here for. (And you thought DNN owed you free software cause you're so damn good looking right?) Corp can test till they're purple but they can't come close to X number of people testing in X different situations. If you are using the latest bleeding edge CE release in a production environment you are going to get burned, plain and simple. You can go back 3 or 4 years in the forums and see the same crap happening back then. So no I don't thing monthly releases are the problem. I think what the problem really is is the expectation that new CE releases should be bug free. That and Corp needs to do a better job structuring and encouraging the DNN community to help out.
 
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6/22/2010 2:37 AM
 
I agree - keep the Release Early, Release Often attitude...

I personally do not upgrade to the latest version unless I absolutely have to - it needs to be tried and tested first for me to put it on a live site, 5 out of 5 of my last upgrades over the last 2 years have failed.

It's a pity as this is not the case in other software markets (iphone apps, Apple OS, Windows updates, game updates) but DNN releases do not have a great history to be completely honest.

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