Beta versions to go sooner into production
@JoeAlbahari, I think it would be great if beta versions went sooner into production, especially if they contain mostly or exclusively bugfixes. Currently, beta versions often wait too long to go into production.
Of course, I could download and use beta versions, but then my LINQPad would not be compatible with my colleagues', who would not use beta versions.
What do you think?
Of course, I could download and use beta versions, but then my LINQPad would not be compatible with my colleagues', who would not use beta versions.
What do you think?
Comments
There's a trade-off, because some users find frequent automatic updates annoying, and this can lead to people switching off automatic updates altogether.
I asked Santa that the latest LINQPad 5 beta goes into production for Christmas. I hope he is reading my letter.
While I don't mind the frequency of beta updates, my only minor issue is that updates aren't done in-place. I have LINQPad pinned to the taskbar installed to Program Files and whenever an update is downloaded and the program is loaded, a "new" icon is created on the taskbar, pointing to the new updated copy. I'll update myself anyway and replace the Program Files copy with the latest.
If there was a single launcher that I could pin that would always run the latest local copy would be appreciated.
This should happen only the first time you run the updated program, before it's able to patch the original. You should see a prompt requesting administrative elevation to complete the task. If you say no, it will be unable to update the original LINQPad in Program Files, and you'll get this problem.
Regarding a new LINQPad 5 RTM, there's really only one new feature in the latest beta, and a few minor bug fixes. I'm not sure whether most users would appreciate the disruption of an auto-update just for this.
Which feature or fix is it that you need?
Well, it's mainly the "restoring NuGet packages" fix that I (or mainly: my colleagues) would need.
Please, excuse me, if I seem to be too pushy about this topic, but I just don't get it. I don't think that people would be disrupted if an auto-update occurred every 1 or 2 months. (It seems like you would have received a lot of hate mails about too frequent updates, or I don't know. :-) ) Now, the last non-beta LINQPad 5 (version 5.40) was released in July. It was 5 months ago, and the release notes of 5.41 has not changed for a while.
IMHO, in olden days the update frequency used to be excellent. The beta version used to get some fixes and new features, and as far as it was stabilized (i.e. no changes for 1 or 2 weeks), the beta version was released to production.
Nowadays, we wait for the beta version to go into production for about half a year. So now the ones who do not want to be "disrupted" do not get disrupted and do not get the bugfixes; and those who want to be up-to-date do not get the bugfixes either. And it's really sad.
Of course, I know that I could use beta version; and sometimes I do, because unfortunately I need to. But my colleagues (and I think many other people as well) just want a product which get the bugfixes in the updates. Not in the beta version (because they do not want to and will not meddle with it), but in the production version. Otherwise they will complain about bugs which have been fixed for months, or worse: stop using the product because it does not work for them.
It's really sad that my colleagues are having problems running my LINQPad scripts e.g. because of that "restoring NuGet packages" bug, and then I tell them that it has been fixed months ago but unfortunately it's still in beta, so I have to suggest them to download the beta version of LINQPad, and they tell me that they don't want to download beta versions because beta versions are not stable enough, and I have to tell them that it's stable enough, and it would have gone into production if this weird anti-disruption, anti-update policy had not been active.