Comments on: What is a “release candidate”?

By: import this. » Blog Archive » Versions and release candidates

import this. » Blog Archive » Versions and release candidates — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 12:53:20 +0000

[...] Kevin Dangoor wonders what is a “release candidate�?? [...]

By: tazzzzz

tazzzzz — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 15:06:50 +0000

I hadn’t thought about that aspect of not mentioning the “guilty parties” — people whose projects I hadn’t been thinking of would speak up. It wasn’t your project that I spotted…

Here’s my thought on the line between beta and rc: you have 1.0beta2 and correct all known bugs there and everything’s looking good. You release 1.0rc1. Turns out that there’s a serious bug there, so you fix that and release 1.0rc2. If all is well with that, you tag it 1.0 final. So, it’s okay to hold up the final release and make another rc if there’s an important enough bug. A lot of people may get hung up on that “final” thing. You can still release a 1.0.1 if more things pop up, so final is not really the end of the line.

I should note that the particular project that prompted this post has *new features* added between each of those rc versions.

By: Tim Golden

Tim Golden — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 14:56:17 +0000

Well, I may well be the guilty party with my WMI module. At least, even if it wasn’t the one you saw, it fits the bill. In my case, it was a combination of not really understanding the idea of a release candidate (or at least not thinking too hard about it) plus letting time get away from me.

As a matter of fact, however, what do you expect to happen if problems crop up in a release candidate? Would the cycle go, eg: 1.0beta1, 1.0beta2, 1.0rc1, 1.0beta3, 1.0rc2, 1.0 final?

TJG