1.7.0 release candidate 1 available for testing

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Dec 7, 2008, at 14:55, Joshua Root wrote:

> Bryan Blackburn wrote:
>> On Sun, Dec 07, 2008 at 04:31:53AM -0600, Ryan Schmidt said:
>>> On Dec 7, 2008, at 03:44, Bryan Blackburn wrote:
>> [...]
>>>> [1] - <http://svn.macports.org/repository/macports/tags/
>>>> release_1_7_0-rc1>
>>>> [2] - <http://trac.macports.org/browser/users/blb>
>>> Thanks for taking the initiative with the 1.7.0 release here.
>>>
>>>
>>> Is there a reason we don't put the 1.7.0-rc1 files in the regular
>>> downloads directory?
>>>
>>> http://trac.macports.org/browser/downloads
>>
>> I chose putting it in /users since it's not a final release, so I  
>> don't want
>> anyone seeing 1.7.0 under downloads and thinking otherwise; also,  
>> I've heard
>> MacUpdate has an automated method for detecting new versions and I  
>> don't
>> want it to pick up a release candidate and show it as the current  
>> version.
>
> Putting the non-final versions in a testing/ subdir should  
> sufficiently
> distinguish them, I think.

That would work.

Other projects also differentiate. Graphviz uses "stable" and  
"development" directories. Cairo uses "releases" and "snapshots"  
directories. Others just use even version numbers for stable and odd  
numbers for development releases (I'm glad we're not using that  
particular strategy for MacPorts).

>> Note that from what I've found, DMGs have only been offered for final
>> releases in the past, so we have no policy about this.  So I would  
>> say now
>> is a good time to create one.

Well we certainly need DMGs of 1.7.0-rc1 (so thank you for making  
them) so that we can verify that the bugs in the 1.6.0 DMG have been  
fixed.

I don't see why we don't release DMGs for every version of MacPorts.

I also find it odd how the MacPorts installer runs selfupdate. You  
install, say, MacPorts 1.5.0 from DMG, and after it's done, you have  
MacPorts 1.6.0 on your hard drive. Strange behavior. Why don't we do  
what other software does to check for updates? When you run the port  
command, check with the MacPorts server to see if a new version of  
MacPorts is available, and if so, print a line notifying the user  
they should update. It would only check once a week of course, or  
rather at an interval configurable in macports.conf (where it could  
also be turned off entirely).