[sword-devel] Missing svn tags for 1.6.0RC1 and RC2 releases?

Jonathan Marsden jmarsden at fastmail.fm
Fri Apr 24 20:20:43 MST 2009


Troy A. Griffitts wrote:

> No, we don't tag RCs  They are not releases, but release candidates :)
> We could.  Tags are cheap, but why?

(1) It means anyone can verify the contents of the tarball against svn,
in case of a suspected trojaned or accidentally corrupted tarball.

(2) It means it is easier to quickly check exactly what changed between
two RC's, or between the final RC and the "final" release.

(3) An alpha release is a release.  A beta release is a release.  And an
rc release is a release, too -- and a candidate to become an official
final "golden" release, unless unexpected problems are found in it.

Any time you publish your codebase as a tarball for others to use,
that's a release, isn't it?  The code has been "set free" (released)
from the confines of the version control system and made available to (a
subset of) the general public.

(4) It's conventional to create a tag as part of your release process,
because it helps your users more easily find these important milestones
in the life of your software, in future.

Not entirely incidentally, here's an example from within your own user
community:

  svn list https://bibletime.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/bibletime/tags

displays

  rel-1-7/
  rel-1-7-alpha1/
  rel-1-7-alpha3/
  rel-1-7-alpha4/
  rel-1-7-beta1/
  rel-1-7-beta2/
  rel-1-7-rc1/
  rel-2-0-alpha1/
  rel-2-0-alpha2/
  rel-2-0-alpha3/
  rel-2-0-beta1/

Is that one release, or eleven? :)

Jonathan



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