[support] Beta versions

[Michael Prasuhn]

One problem with this description is the way things are generated. A  
release that ends in -dev, is automatically generated by the system  
every time a change is committed. Alpha releases must be based on  
tags, which means they are a single snapshot of the code, that will  
never change.

So say a developer makes an Alpha release, states that some of the  
features aren't complete, but offers it to try anyway. Then say the  
developer makes a few changes to try to make those new features work  
correctly, but in the end, introduces a big that corrupts data. This  
is committed and rolled into a dev release. By your list below, you  
would choose a -dev release over a working alpha release.

One of the best ways to evaluate a module that has only a -dev  
release, is by the age of that release. If it's 6-8 months or a year  
old, and there are no bug reports in the issue queue, it could be more  
stable than another module's 2.4 release.

Remember here is no guarantee of quality behind anything in contrib.

All any of these labels mean, is that someone took the time to label  
what *they thought* it should be called and -dev is just the lack of  
taking time to label anything.

-Mike

On Sep 18, 2008, at 5:38 AM, michel wrote:

> janni frento ha scritto:
>>
>> Hi!
>>
>> Is it adviseable to use beta modules, developer and alpha version  
>> on a live site?
> RC: say "yes"
> BETA: "at your risk"
> DEV: "at your your your risk"
> ALPHA: "is a joke?"
>
> M.
> -- 
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Michael Prasuhn
mike at mikeyp.net
http://mikeyp.net