Release candidate 4 of Open Watcom 1.9 is now ready to download and test. We are converging on a full release and it is my hope that this release candidate will be the last one before 1.9 is final. This RC contains some fixes to the Win32 API support and a number of other minor fixes.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
4 comments:
Hello, another hot greeting from Russia in this blog)
I am writing here for the first time and I have a few questions:
1) Why you have not noted the release candidate 5 here?
2) When it was ready to be a full version?
3) How can usual programmers help Open Watcom Project?
Thanks for your comment. I apparently forgot to mention RC5 here. I apologize for that oversight. There is going to be an RC6 as soon as I can find a couple of hours to put it together. I expect RC6 will be the last release candidate before the full release (it is fixing two regressions that were noticed at the last minute). I expect the full release of 1.9 to be available in early June.
If you are interested in contributing to Open Watcom that would be great! I suggest that you introduce yourself to the community by posting a message on the contributor's forum at
news://news.openwatcom.org/openwatcom.contributors
You should be able to use any NNTP client to access that group. I understand that it can also be accessed via Google Groups. I hope to see you there!
I had not time, but I've wanted to thank you very much for the Open Watcom. I have used different IDEs, but in the Open Watcom loved at first sight. I don't know why, but there is something special in it... thank you, that you continue to make us happy by updating this product.
More questions:
Why there are so many release candidates before the full version? Why it updates only once a year?
Thanks for your good words.
I think the number of release candidates is related to the relatively long release cycle. Since each release contains a significant number of changes it takes time for regressions and other issues to be worked out. Also because we only release infrequently there is a desire to make each release as good as possible. If a regression slips through it will be months before the fix is available in the next release.
The long release cycle is partly because our release system is not very well streamlined. It is a somewhat labor intensive process so we don't want to do it too often!
However, I think the real reason for the long release cycle is traditional; it's the way we've always done it. Many Open Watcom users are "old school" in their approach to programming (not necessarily a bad thing) and value stability over access to the newest features. Products that produce a new version every month make it hard for users to keep up. You end up actively supporting a wide range of slightly different versions, which is difficult for our small development community.
Post a Comment