Sometime I think this should become a requirement rather than something optional, all current dev releases could be promoted to a first release and new dev releases banned.

Not sure how good an idea this is, but if dev releases are so unstable, then maybe they should remain unreleased until they are, and if they are stable, then there's no reason for them to be dev.

On Feb 18, 2008 11:43 AM, Xavier Bestel <xavier.bestel@free.fr> wrote:
Hi,

I'm writing a little rant about modules. I know it's tempting when you
start your module to call it a "development version", because it doesn't
work so well yet or it's not finished. But many modules never leave that
state, and e.g. now that the official Drupal version is 6.x and that
version 5.x is just a bugfix release, there are still many modules with
only a 5.x-1.x-dev release.

There's also the case where you have a concurrent -dev and numbered
release, but only the -dev release has the features and the bugfix to
make it usable.

This isn't just a cosmetic problem. As all releases have the same name,
it's very inconvenient to store different versions, e.g. to go back in
case of problem. Also it doesn't work so well with the update module
(even if it tries to workaround that).

So please, do proper releases. If you need to work on features, do a
parallel 1.n and 2.n version, but avoid using -dev in code which should
really be used.

Thanks,

       Xav





--
Ashraf Amayreh
http://blogs.aamayreh.org