Forum OpenACS Q&A: Feature creep, stable releases and 3.2.5 vs. 4.x

What you are describing is the normal evolution of *any* software product. The difference is that because its an 'open' product you have transparency during development. Just because you can't normally see the process, doesn't mean its not going on in any other product.

Therefore I think your comments are somewhat unfair.

Version 4.5 has not been in beta for a year, its been a stable release.

4.6 is due for full release in the coming weeks (rather than months).

So....

Is 4.5 stable enough to build on.. Yes.

If you're strating a new development should you use 3.x.... No.

If your delivery isn;t going to be finished in the next couple of weeks (which I guess is the case) then I'd base it onthe current 4.6 pre-beta. It shouldn't be too difficult to work in bug fixes etc once the full release is out...

I'd also like to take issue with 'I think OpenACS community will demonstrate maturity by introducing "better less but better" principle'

Thas exactly what is happening. 4.6 is not a major functional overhaul, its very much a consolidation release based on things found in 4.5...

OpenACS 4 in general has a *much* better foundation/design underpinning that 3 (whihc frankly looks dated these days) and has maintained a reasonably stable data model core throughout its development.

So, hope that advice helps, and hope thats set OpenACS 4 in its proper context.

We have used 3.x, 4.5 pre alpha, 4.5 alpha, 4.5 beta and 4.5 stable on our production sites.  A good number of them are in 4.5 beta.  I think 4.5 has proven itself to be a production ready code. Also using 3.x and going to 4.x you will have to unlearn some stuff.  I think its best for you start in 4.x since you have the benefit of having a fresh perspective.

This is still in the 4.5 tarball.

It took nine months to make producton-quality release (4.5), and now instead of getting maintanance releases (4.5.1 etc.) there is 4.6.  Again in beta. By contrast, 3.2.x has been a production release since May 2000 and receives only maintainance releases since then. Which one looks more stable to you?

4.6 _is_ the maintenance release for 4.5. There's no rule saying that we must release maintenance releases as another dot.

4.7 will be the release which will have more significant modifications to the core.

It's true that 3.2 has had "production" status for longer than 4.x, but it still had some pretty horrible bugs that were uncovered and had to be fixed.

The degree of production-readiness varies a lot throughout several parts of 3.2. 4.5 however, is in much better shape, and 4.6 much more so. You have to realize that the release standards that OpenACS goes through are in average much higher than those that ArsDigita used, judging by some of the code that was released.

4.x simply offers so much more in terms of ease and consistency of development, with so much more real-production-ready code that it's hard for me to find time to even go back to 3.2 series to work on its maintenance. Much less want to develop a new site with it.

I am also considering moving my old Apache/Perl home page to ACS.  But I am not sure I would want to use 4.x for this.

My concerns, however, are of a slightly different nature.  If one recalls, one of the arguments for AOLServer that Phil used to give was the fact that while you can build a database-backed website, you do not have to tie yourself to the database 100%.

If I am not greatly mistaken, the beauty of 3.2.5 is that even if Oracle/Postges are down you can still use static content of the site.  Bboard/commetns will not be available, yet you plain .html page will be there.

It is not possible (or at least I don't know of a way) to do it in 4.x, as all the URLs in address bar are not 'real'.  If a database ever fell over, anybody hitting a page on a site will get something like 'Could not allocate a database pool, yada-yada-yada'.

OK, here is my "pure marketing" suggestions. I suggest that a release policy document be published on the site. For example, major version means architecture change (3->4), minor branch means functionality addition/change (4.2->4.5), and further "dots" mean bug fixed (4.5.0 -> 4.5.1). Something along these lines maybe (p.3)? That would help. And many thanks to everybody for the advice. I understand 4.5 is production qualtiy release, 4.6 will be bug fixing release, and 4.7 will have large changes to the core.

AOLServer will, but not coupled with OACS 4.x.  For example, /doc is not really a /doc under $serverroot (or %pageroot -- cannot remember config variable name right away), but rather is a part of acs-core-docs package.  You cannot browse it unless OACS has started up AND URL-to-package-whatever-function returned the real URL path to /doc (which will be $serverroot/packages/acs-core-docs/www/).  You cannot even get to $serverroot, in fact -- only to www under it.

Obviously, one can still create whatver directory under the www and put plain-old .html there and knowing full path still be able to access it.