I don't know if this is the appropriate place to ask, but will the upgrade from the Betas to the final version be just as "easy" as it has been? I ask because I am running Beta 2 right now and plan on upgrading directly to the final when/if it is released next week.

Thank you and props go to the whole MT team! I recently returned to blogging and even after a good amount of time, it is still my software of choice!

we can estimate that the final release will be sometime next week!

Believe it or not, I could have told you this a few weeks ago, if you wanted. I'll be on vacation next week, so won't be able to install until I get back!

Can you post more about why getting this release out the door is more important than making sure that the product is solid? Should users wait for 3.2.1 since 3.2 will be closer to a beta4?

TPC,

The underlying purpose/justification of the nightly builds and the versioned Beta releases is to be able to have as wide a range of users ( familar with the system) working with the code base as possible in order to work out bugs as it's quite unlikely that the 6A development staff to find every bug without some measure of assistance. Do not misread that statement to be any type of attack on 6A for their efforts. They are to be commended for such dedication to releasing solid code. I would recommend that if you are comfortable working with beta level code, or "hot" code in the case of the nightlies -- that you explore some of the nightly releases.

Software releases usually go thru a number of test builds for just this sort of thing. I've seen some applications go as high as a Beta 7 in order to ensure stability. You can rest assured that the staff of 6A would NOT under any circumstances release unstable code. If they are comfortable with releasing the code post Beta 3, then it will be released. I know members of 6A's development staff fairly well, and from what I've learned that releasing unstable code is not something they would do. Regardless of being behind schedule with a release. I think you would be more upset if a "too-soon" release crashed your webserver rather than a late release running rock solid.

TPC, what John says is absolutely true. Our whole motivation with this open beta process was to find as many bugs as possible under the widest environmental conditions in the shortest amount of time. That comes on top of alpha testing and QA testing. All in all, outside or professional testers have been testing this release for three months. Most people wouldn't consider that "rushing"

Over the last week, we have seen a significant drop-off of high priority bugs (I'll define what those are below). When that happens, it's time to release another beta release with rollups of all bugs fixed since the last, since many people stick only to the versioned betas. As John said, if you are still using beta-2, you haven't seen an enormous number of bug fixes.

Our motivation with the timing of the release is easy to understand: We want to release as early as possible but avoid the necessity of having a 3.2.1. That means we have to fix any bugs that really impair the user experience. So far, there are very few active bugs like that left.

But if a bug like that were to come up, even on the day of release, we would postpone, fix it, and go back through another cycle. We're dedicated to having quality software, but like any software company, we can't waste enormous amounts of time on fixing every single possible bug (or waiting around for new ones) before calling it 'ready'. Remember, there are a lot of people out there who are using 3.17 or, worse, 2.64, for whom this 3.2 release is a huge improvement. What's more, the longer we tie our engineers up in beta, the longer the wait to 3.3 features.

And believe me, if you knew what the 3.3 features were, you wouldn't be so content to waiting.

Do we get to see the new helpfile(s) before release?

damn, now I wanna know what the 3.3 planned features are :P

This is fantastic news Jay. I'm really looking forward to upgrading my installation soon! Thanks to everyone at 6A for their hard work on 3.2!

John and Jay:

Thanks for the reassurance. I went though two beta cycles for a large company that produces financial tracking software for the home, and noted that they used some of the same language to push software out the door that was in no shape to be presentable. After the 3rd beta they fixed "hundreds" of bugs and pushed it back out the door without sending it back out for their beta test program.

Thanks for the assurance that 6A is dedicated to doing the right thing.

btw, I quit working with the beta (probably after beta 1) since my templates are going to require an overhaul and I thought it might be a good idea to wait for the big news that was promised in regards to templates.

is there such a thing as a techaddict?

Terri wrote

...will the upgrade from the Betas to the final version be just as "easy" as it has been?

Ummm, no. I'm not sure why we would want to make it harder. That would be a regression. From here on out, it should only get easier.

The Plaid Cow wrote:

After the 3rd beta they fixed "hundreds" of bugs and pushed it back out the door without sending it back out for their beta test program.

We would never do that. Our last Beta will almost certainly be the same code as the final release. To do otherwise would be ludicrous due to the risk of regressions and other unintended glitches. Again, our point here is not to have to do a 3.2.1. As a company, we're tired of releases like 3.122. We are sticking to the "Quality is a Feature" mantra...

Dan wrote:

Believe it or not, I could have told you this a few weeks ago, if you wanted. I'll be on vacation next week, so won't be able to install until I get back!

Dan, as I said about hopefully beta-3 will be the final release. You should be fine with that.

Sara wrote:

Do we get to see the new helpfile(s) before release?

Indeed. Don't think we've forgotten about them. They will be released with beta-3 if not before. We've been working furiously on them, but there's a lot going on and every member of this team is working at 120%. Some things are slower in coming than we would like.

Demonsurfer wrote:

is there such a thing as a techaddict?

You have to ask?

I was wondering if there will be any new pre-built stylesheets accompanying the release of 3.2? I really liked the ones that came with 2.6's, but ever since 3 came out, it just seemed like the same format just different colors. I'm only asking because I really suck at making new stylesheets. :/

hmm.. I saw something in one of the templates about 2-column or 3-column layout, so that may be an indication of things to come...

I blogged about this some time ago, and i've always wondered if it was just me that was seeing this, but is the toolbar for modifying bold, underline, link and quote etc when creating new entries viewable for Safari users? I'm using beta 2 and at this stage it isn't there. Here's the blog post about it from earlier this year: http://www.garyelshaw.com/mtb/archives/2005/04/index.html#000035

i've got an error message when i try to go "Plugin Actions-Refresh Template(s)"

Can't use string ("6ce86db43ef4cc7cdae8521fccb63515") as a HASH ref while "strict refs" in use at /usr/home/*/mt/plugins/TemplateRefresh/TemplateRefresh.pl line 548.

it happened with beta-3.

the 3.2 beta broke my use of the "on this day" plug in, complaining about tags out of context. has anyone else reported this problem? is there a known solution or work around?