Frhed 1.4 stable release plans

[kimmov]

Some initial thoughts about next Frhed stable release.

I first thought we could do long "resurrection" for the Frhed and do large update in every way. But at it seems, there is a lot more interest in Frhed alpha releases that I could even imagine. So it is apparent we really need stable release for most users so they don't need to use our development releases in their work.

I think the current Frhed status (as of Frhed 1.3.3 Alpha) is pretty good. There apparently are no big bugs open (at least I haven't found them and none are reported to the bug tracker).

So what is left to get stable release out is improvements. And even in this category I don't see anything that we absolutely need for stable release. Of course we still do all kinds of smaller improvements, but there is nothing we couldn't live without.

This means we can release stable release pretty quickly.

My initial plan is:

• One Frhed alpha release in begin of next January (2009)
• Frhed beta release in middle of January (2009)
  
  • Which means creating branch for stable release. Only bug fixes allowed to that branch.
  • All 1.4.x releases are done from that branch.
  • Trunk is open for development towards next stable release (1.6?).
• Frhed 1.4.0 stable release in begin of February (2009)
• Bug fix releases (1.4.x) if needed

There's been already work towards Unicode build support and translating in the current Alpha releases. These features won't be in 1.4 stable release. They simply are not ready.

[kimmov]

Actually there are couple of things that must be done before the stable release:

• Remove saving settings into per-version key to registry
• Remove feature to Upgrade settings from previous version (not needed after above item)
• Remove application feature to remove Frhed (there is uninstaller doing this)
• Remove the dialog "Writing Frhed settings for first time" which is shown when Frhed is started for a first time. Closing that dialog takes much longer than Frhed writes few registry settings.
• Unify Frhed name to be Frhed everywhere (with first capital letter)

[kimmov]

Remove saving settings into per-version key to registry

Done.

Remove application feature to remove Frhed (there is uninstaller doing this)

Done.

Remove the dialog "Writing Frhed settings for first time" which is shown when Frhed is started for a first time. Closing that dialog takes much longer than Frhed writes few registry settings.

Done.

Unify Frhed name to be Frhed everywhere (with first capital letter)

Done.

There are few bugs in our bug list, but nothing major. So there is a good change to do the 1.3.5 beta release next week. After that it should be smaller tweaks, manual updates etc for the stable release.

[kimmov]

No new remarkable bugs reported and haven't heard about any bad behavior.

So I think I'll make the beta release tomorrow (Tuesday).

[kimmov]

Frhed 1.3.10 beta release is now available.

Unless there are some serious bugs found, 1.4 stable release should happen within two weeks.