Quote:
Originally Posted by a_daley
With using an Alpha group you could be simply trialing major fixes and new features, while CC still has minor unresolved problems (normally documented on release) which can be dealt with in due course for a beta group release...
Having been part of many Alpha testing groups, be aware it takes considerable time and can cause many errors to your device - please, please, please if Chaley decides to implement this and you are part of an Alpha group back up your device every single day and every single time you make a change - even if it is to an unrelated piece of software. Things corrupt and conflict so easily....
Also please do a full system recover to see how it all works before everything turns into dodo land and suddenly find it's not backing up everything and you've lost important data....
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My intention would be to make intermediate releases to the alpha group once I have new functions/change that are internally tested. These releases might happen once a week, faster if comments call for it, slower if I am feeling lazy or traveling.
The beta group would get releases a week or two before I intend to make a general release, which generally happen every three months or so. The hope is that the beta releases are very close to production, and because of that I will be much less willing either to add new functionality at that point or to change them for anything that isn't a bug. Of course, the definition of "bug" is mutable.
a_daley's comment about backups is a good one. There is no guarantee that one can revert to an older release without doing a total uninstall. Reasons: releases change both the database structure and the meaning of settings, and reverting won't revert those changes. In general, doing a CC settings backup before upgrading will suffice unless there is also a database upgrade, but I can't guarantee this. And it is worth noting that this has always been true for prereleases. Having an alpha group won't change that.