Release schedule

[tzlaine]

It has been over a year since v0.2 came out, and though Geoff has been invaluable in helping find all the bugs before v0.3 came out, Geoff plus 100 of his closest friends would be even better. Moving forward, we're going to try to make releases a lot more frequent. We'll be releasing -RCx release candidate builds monthly, and possibly more frequently when stability fixes are made. We'll also be releasing non-RC, numbered builds more frequently. For instance, using the previous release as an example, we would have released 0.2x when research was implemented, and 0.2(x+1) when production was implemented. Hopefully, this will allow the smoother reporting of bugs, and will appeal more to the community, who currently labors in the dark for long periods of time.

[Underling]

That sounds excellent. More frequent releases should go far in keeping a high level of interest among the community. As a teacher, parent of a 1.5 year old, and Grad student my time is not always my own. However, I do check these boards several times a day (it counts towards my daily "down time")

I also teach quite a few gaming enthusiasts. I have not yet encouraged them to visit the site out of respect for your request to keep the project on the DL. Now that the site has been publically announced, I expect to be able to produce several active bug testers for you in the near future.

I must say that I am thoroughly impressed with the road this project is following. If I can contribute in no more constructive a form than as an occasional poster and also by spreading the word verbally, I will still do my best to lend a hand.

Have a good one,

the 'Ling

[Moriarty]

I participate in the communitity for another OS game. OpenTTD (openttd.org). They make releases irregularly (last one 7 months ago, next one within a month I think).
But they also have "nightlies", which are automatic builds from the SVN made each night. Thus it's possible for people who want the very latest version to be able to play it, and the devs get reports for bugs from lots more people than just those who can compile it themselves.

Personally I think this setup really does help with the bug reporting. You might want to consider it.

[Combatjuan]

I'm also a fan of more frequent releases (I live on the wild side. I run Debian unstable). It definitely generates more buzz. With regards to 'nightly builds', having a public CVS server effectively takes care of that. Keep up the good work. I definitely seems there are plenty of developers on the boards that are at least moderately interested in contributing. This sort of thing brings the level of excitement up a notch and makes it feel like one could more easily get into the swing of the project.

[Rockstone]

It has been over a year since v0.2 came out, and though Geoff has been invaluable in helping find all the bugs before v0.3 came out, Geoff plus 100 of his closest friends would be even better. Moving forward, we're going to try to make releases a lot more frequent. We'll be releasing -RCx release candidate builds monthly, and possibly more frequently when stability fixes are made. We'll also be releasing non-RC, numbered builds more frequently. For instance, using the previous release as an example, we would have released 0.2x when research was implemented, and 0.2(x+1) when production was implemented. Hopefully, this will allow the smoother reporting of bugs, and will appeal more to the community, who currently labors in the dark for long periods of time.

Not to open up an old thread, but so much for monthly releases, what happened?

[charlieg]

+1 for nightlies, if possible. They are a nice compromise between very regular releases (which require coordination and consume valuable developer time) and irregular releases (which can frustrate users).

[Yog S'loth]

...and about +1,000,000,000 over "every coupla years" releases...

...keep pluggin' away boys! Looking forward to .4 before I start collecting social security!

[mZhura]

and .4 is still out there...

guess we will have 1.0 in less then 10 years!

[Bigjoe5]

and .4 is still out there...

guess we will have 1.0 in less then 10 years!

Your estimate is overly optimistic, IMO. Speaking of "nightly builds", that sounds like it would be really helpful for someone like myself, who has become fluent in the FO text editing language, but can barely tell a compiler from a command-line terminal. Just a thought, though I'm sure I'll be able to get FO compiled one of these days...