Minor version numbers in LSWS 5

[wanah]

Hello,

Any chance of adding minor version number sor build numbers to Litespeed 5 ?
The only way to know if you have the latest version is to force an update. It would be much easier if we could just check what the build number is.

It would also be nice to have access to some form of list of build numbers to see if an update has a chance of fixing a bug.

Most software developpers never apply a change without changing at least a minor version number.

Is there a resaon to not have sub version numbers ?

 

[bettinz]

+1

 

[Michael]

Howdy,

The reason we don't have this is that change logs release numbers take time to put together and we update the code too frequently to keep putting together change logs every time the code is updated.

Whenever a bug is reported, we move as quickly as possible to address that issue and update the code so that our users can have full functionality. This means that the code may be updated multiple times per day. Each time we make a new release and put out a change log, this requires hours of work by a member of our team. By consolidating the number of releases, we are able to lessen this work. This means that our team has more time to spend on bug fixes/development, which is why we are able to fix bugs so fast. If we were to redirect team work to having minor build numbers with change logs for each build, this would greatly slow down the bug fixing process. We feel that would be a greater loss.

Michael

 

[wanah]

Would adding +1 to a minor build number require much more time to the fix ?

For exemple you could have :

5.0.0 build 25
5.0.0 build 26
5.0.0 build 27
[…]
5.0.0 build 2468

You could then ask customers what build they have.

Maybe you could look how git works for commits, you just enter a small sentance saying what ha been fixed…

I'm not talking about announcing an important update, just adding +1 to a build number and having an interface to see what was changed in each commit…

Even if you don't want to show the details of the commits (security reasons for example) just having build numbers to know if we have the latest version or not would be great.

Thanks

 

[Michael]

Hey Wanah,

You are right. The change logs (and the updates all over the site) are the biggest drag. We are looking at a way to address your (and other users' concern about not knowing which version you are getting) without adding too much drag to our development process. It definitely won't be in RC 1, but perhaps in RC 2. Probably the solution will be something that is perhaps sparer than you would like — an extra version number and list of release numbers and the time they were released. The extra version number would allow you to revert back to a certain build so that you would know which build you are getting. There will probably not be change logs for these versions, though. The change logs will continue to be released with more major releases.

Sorry. I should have mentioned this in my first answer, but I guess I got hung up on change logs.

Cheers,

Michael

 

[wanah]

Hello Michael, this would be fine. I suggest that you keep litespeed staff only comments on build numbers so your support team can provide information when needed to fix à problem on the forums instead of checking with your developers each time.

 

[Michael]

Hi Wanah,

Thanks for the suggestion. The issue usually isn't that the support team doesn't know what's been changed. The issue is that it's often hard to know whether a particular symptom stems from the problem that was fixed. That's why we generally just tell people to try upgrading to the latest version. We have seen many times that problems we thought were unrelated (until we looked further) were actually fixed by the same bug fix.

Thanks again for all your suggestions. We're doing our best to make LSWS as usable as possible. Keep the feedback coming. We really appreciate it.

Cheers,

Michael