[Audacity-quality] Distinguishing Releases, RCs, Nightlies.

[James C. <cr...@in...>]

Gale wrote:

> We have no way to indicate an RC is an RC inside the app such that the user
>      might know. I don't see a solution until building is automatic, because
>      we probably don't want to rebuild just to turn a successful RC into a
>      release.

Automatic building (of installers / dmgs) won't solve it either. The 
release would still have to be 'different' to the RC, and then it would 
not be what we had tested.  We'd want to be 100% sure nothing had been 
upgraded on the build machine between the RC being built and the release 
build.


Instead I think our best option to providing status of a version is as 
follows.

Currently 'Check Version' passes a single parameter:
http://www.audacityteam.org/download/?from_ver=2.1.3

It could pass more:
http://www.audacityteam.org/download/?from_ver=2.1.3&commitid=cf68891&sha256=b0fa790


This then needs a not very hard script on the server that matches the 
versions and commit Ids.  The response page could then give a proper 
identifier:
Audacity 2.1.3 RC1 of 10th-Jan-2017; Windows.

With this approach we can change that designation later by changing the 
information in the script.  If RC1 becomes our release, we can now make 
that script say:
Audacity 2.1.3 Official Release; Windows.


So we ask users to click on 'check version', and tell us what they see.  
We can also put the check version link in the about box too, if we want to.

--James