PW3 - Next Master Version Query

[ridgedale]

The multi-site installation I'm currently working on requires some of the new features/methods released in the 3.0.107 development branch.

Does anyone have any idea when the next Processwire 3 master version is likely to be released?

[adrian]

There are many of us running the dev version on live sites - it's typically more stable than master. Of course there are exceptions on occasion, but I tend to look at the changes implemented in each dev commit - if they are significant, I'll hold off for a week, but if not, I'll update right away.

[ridgedale]

Hi @adrian ,

Thank you for your reply. 

If I were to be the only site superuser, that would be OK. However, other administrators will eventually take over in future and I personally think it would be safer to advise future superuser administrators that they should only upgrade to master ProcessWire versions to avoid/minimise potential upgrade issues. Other current and future superusers do not and and may not in some cases have the technical expertise to deal with the potential upgrade issues that may arise.

Is there any thread available that monitors ProcessWire development progress and might give some idea when the next master release will be available?

[adrian]

7 hours ago, ridgedale said:

I personally think it would be safer to advise future superuser administrators that they should only upgrade to master ProcessWire versions to avoid/minimise potential upgrade issues.

I understand the theory behind sticking with labelled master versions and I don't see any harm in advising future superusers to follow that approach, but I guess I don't see why you can't use the latest dev now and still advise them of that for the future. It's not like being on dev forces you to stay on dev.

 

7 hours ago, ridgedale said:

Is there any thread available that monitors ProcessWire development progress and might give some idea when the next master release will be available?

No there isn't - it's really up to Ryan to make this decision and it's not something that is planned for specific date intervals. I think part of the reason for this is that he know that most of us are probably running the dev anyway.

I think the key thing here is that starting a new project on the dev branch makes sense because you'll be testing thoroughly as you're using it. Upgrading an existing site to dev maybe the situation that is technically a safer approach. But I have been using PW for 5 years and in that time I think I've only come across 2-3 major bugs introduced in a dev version that affect existing functionality. Typically all you might have to worry about is new features which haven't been fully tested yet.

Obviously PW is not perfect (https://github.com/processwire/processwire-issues/issues) and I actually think we need more solving of issues right now than new features, but no software is bug free. But does a "master" label make it more stable? Sometimes, but not always ?

[ridgedale]

Thanks again @adrian for your further feedback.

14 hours ago, adrian said:

No there isn't - it's really up to Ryan to make this decision and it's not something that is planned for specific date intervals.

Understood.

14 hours ago, adrian said:

I have been using PW for 5 years and in that time I think I've only come across 2-3 major bugs introduced in a dev version that affect existing functionality.

Would you mind sharing what those 2-3 major bugs are/were? Are you aware of any issues that might arise from an upgrade from the 3.0.62 master version to the 3.0.107 dev version?

14 hours ago, adrian said:

Obviously PW is not perfect (https://github.com/processwire/processwire-issues/issues) and I actually think we need more solving of issues right now than new features, but no software is bug free.

Whilst I appreciate that no software is perfect or bug free and agree with you that a greater emphasis should be placed on resolving existing issues, it would be helpful if the https://github.com/processwire/processwire-issues/issues could be filtered at least in terms of whether or not they relate to PW2 or PW3.

I note there are no issues labelled as severity: low, severity: medium, severity: high or severity: critical and that 12 of the 216 current outstanding issues appear to have been fixed but have not been closed by the initiator. Do you have any advice on the best approach to filtering (via Labels) the issues to learn what issues may be of concern? Also what does the Authors dropdown menu refer to?