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Question about patching procedures
Started 11 years ago by williamansley | 7 posts |
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Yuniar, I am wondering if you can provide some details about the way you handle patches. Very often I see people reporting a problem and then being told that it is due to a bug and that they should contact you directly for the fixed files. This is great for the people who have contacted you about the problem caused by the bug, but not so great for everyone else who immediately wants the same fix and not so great for you if everyone contacts you directly for the fix. Couldn't you make the patched files for Machform available from the members areas as you find and fix bugs?
Also, do you apply the bug fixes immediately to the code for the installer package (available from the members area) for latest version of Machform? I hope to be upgrading to Machform 3.4 at some point later this year and I want to know if I can just re-download the installer package when I am ready and assume that it has all of the bug fixes applied, or if I should contact you instead for all of the fixed files and use them to overwrite the files installed by the installer package I already have?
Posted 11 years ago # -
William - I'll share my observations. Today (15-Feb-2013) I again downloaded MachForm version 3.4. I had originally downloaded MachForm version 3.4 on 30-Jan-2013. All of the patches that Yuniar has sent to me (6 PHP files) were included in the 15-Feb-2013 download. Just for grins I did a binary comparison of the 30-Jan-2013 download and the 15-Feb-2013 download. There were 13 PHP files changed and 1 JS file changed. So it seems changes are moved to the download area when or soon after bugs are discovered and corrected.
I believe it would be better if a modification date would be included on the download page so users would know if they have the latest version without re-downloading and performing a compare. An alternate would be to increment the version when a minor change is made such as from version 3.4 to version 3.401 and etc.
I have always been impressed and very satisfied with the MachForm software (and support) and even more impressed with version 3.4. When I first installed Machform several versions back, I had a lot of customizations to meet my customers needs much of it related to PayPay payments (before PayPal was an option in MachForm). With version 3.4, customization is minimal and is in one file only.
Steve
Posted 11 years ago # -
@Steve1951: Thank you for sharing! I completely agree with your idea that a modification date and/or a minor update version number increment be used for the Machform installers.
Posted 11 years ago # -
yuniar
Steve nailed it correctly.
To confirm it, we updated the package on member area (or the package which being sent to any users purchased during that day) immediately as soon as we have the fix. So you can assure that the latest update is available from the member area.
We didn't increase the version number for some reasons. Most people are reluctant (for various reasons) to update their machform. So if we released new version number for every single bugfix we found, you won't be able to keep up and this would be a bad experience.
We increased the version number once the bugfixes are large enough, or there is new feature being introduced or there is a major security issue.
You can also consider this forum as our bug report database. You'll find many of them are bug reports. So if you found any topic regarding a bug and we mentioned that we have the fix, you can assume (for most cases) that the fix is also available from the member area as well.We've been doing it this way since version 1 and I believe it works great so far (although it's not perfect).
An ideal solution is to implement auto update functionality into MachForm, so that you will be able to update your machform without the hassle of manually downloading/updating any files.Auto update is currently on our todo list. Once MachForm has auto update functionality, then it would be viable to release the bugfix immediately and increase the version number as well.
MachForm Founder
Posted 11 years ago # -
While auto update would be great for people with vanilla installations of Machform, wouldn't it be a dangerous feature for the many people with customized installations?
Posted 11 years ago # -
yuniar
There will be some sort of confirmation required from the user of course.
Most likely, MachForm will simply alert you that new version is available and you can update your machform simply by clicking the update button (no need to download manually through FTP and upload them).
It's great for those who haven't done any modifications (there are many actually).
While for those who have done some modifications, they can simply discard the alert and do the upgrade on their own. At least you can know that new update is available.Well, at least that the rough idea. More details need to be designed later once we really into this.
MachForm Founder
Posted 11 years ago # -
Yes, if it worked that way, that would minimize any potential problems. When you implement this, it will provide yet another reason for people to want to avoid modifying Machform's base code. Implementing custom verification with regexp, as I suggested in the posting linked to below, would be one way to allow people to have the flexibility currently provided only by customizing the code. While I recall that you object to implementing this feature because you fear it will make Machform too hard to use, I still feel this fear is groundless, for the reasons I have already stated.
Obviously I want this feature to make my own life easier. I realize that there wouldn't be that many other users who would find it helpful, but those users who did find it useful would be really grateful it was there!
http://www.appnitro.com/forums/topic/feature-request-custom-field-verification?replies=4#post-14138
Posted 11 years ago #
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