In a recent post, Andrew announced a beta version of Rack and the SDK.
The downloads page doesn’t distinguish beta versions from official versions. How can I tell whether a given download version is beta or official?
would indeed be good if they were labeled.
Beta builds for Rack are identical to stable builds, so they have the same version name because the packages must have identical bits. This is fine because if I reject a beta build, I’ll simply not publish it and increment the version name for the stable build (or simply try another beta/stable cycle). Make sense? Having identical bits is important for making sure a few dozen/hundred people test the exact package that will be sent off to 10,000+ users.
so they are more like release candidates than betas?
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You’re right, release candidate is a better term for these since they are intended (but not proven) to be as stable as the release package.
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Let’s see if I understand: You will never replace any version that you’ve posted on the downloads page, but you may choose not to publish it as an official release.
If that’s what you mean, it makes sense.
Correct. At any given point in time, there’s only one “official release”. In the case of a failed release candidate, it will simply never get that status at any point in time.