What is the reason to use BETA version?

Question

V1.6.3 is stable version that has been developed by Q2A founder (Gideon) over the years. New one is glamorous. However, new ones have many issues at the same time. Discard the stable version, what is the reason to use new one in a hurry? I want to hear to users who are using BETA in the public site.

1. Do you know the meaning of each version
   (e.g. ALPHA > BETA > RC (Release Candidate) > Stable)?
2. Are you properly understand the changes in V1.7?
3. If you have some problems, can you deal with yourself?
4. Which changes (features) of V1.7 is necessary for you?
   (e.g. mysqli for PHP5.5, bug fix, etc)

Answer 1

As far as I can make sense out of things 1.7  won't ever see the light of day and is just a deflection exercise. There is no point in ordinary users abandoning the stable release of 1.6.3 because there's nothing significant in the 1.7 even as it was proposed back in February (almost last year) The whole thing seems to have been the promise of a buggy, very little? See... http://www.question2answer.org/qa/31514/what-do-you-want-in-question2answer-1-7  I note that the only reference to any kind of roadmap, including what 1.8 might deliver has been erased form the posting, so. The future doesn't hold out much hope and who knows if/when v1.8 will see even an alpha release... No doubt it will be soon?

What advantages do PHP 5.5 or mysqli over previous iterations mean to users of Q2A and all they effectively gain is a pile of bugs in somebody else's playground.

Yes, I know the difference between alpha, beta, RC and stable releases and the jump from 1.6.3 to 1.7 should have delivered something for users. Representing quite a major release but instead, it is a glorified 1.6.4 beta at best imo.

Answer 2

Beta versions are by definition not stable, so in general they should not be used on live sites.

The intention of the beta version is for people to download and test it (i.e. on their local system), in order to find any bugs so they can be fixed for the final version.

A few issues have been found in the 1.7 beta which have been fixed. A second beta will be released this weekend, and if all is well the final version will be released in a week or two.

(BTW we wouldn't always have a second beta, the main reason for one here is that we updated a bit of functionality regarding plugin/theme metadata.)

Edit: I should also make clear that the dev branch on Github should be considered to be in an "alpha" state. Anything on there which has not been released in a beta version could be changed/removed at any time. Of course we try to minimize that as much as possible but it's worth pointing out.

Comments

Would an upgrade from 1.6.3 stable to 1.7 stable possible or should i wait till 1.7 stable is released.

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You can upgrade from any version. In fact, the installation process runs all upgrades since the first version :)