Beta Testing FAQ
You can find answers to many common questions regarding the beta testing of Paradigma Software products.
General
Q: I am a current user of a Valentina product. Why should I participate in the beta testing?
Are you really saying “Maybe it`s better to be lazy or 'extremely busy right today' and wait while other people are just doing this dirty job?”
Yes, we know you are busy. There is a huge upside to testing a beta though. The sooner we confirm that an issue is fixed or a new feature works, the sooner we can release an update.
Actually, few reasons can be listed:
If everybody is lazy or “very busy” nobody will test new features
If you participate then you can check early that your product works with a newer build, and if it doesn't we can fix it sooner rather than later
You can push Valentina development in the direction _you_ need. Yes, we are listening and always try to implement asked features
Yes, we perfectly understand, that it must be very easy way to switch between RELEASE (x) and BETA (x+1). In the section below we give tips about how you can use beta builds easily.
Q: If I beta test a release, does that mean you will implement my dream feature or improvement?
Sorry, we can't make a blanket statement. However, we do consider feature requests based on the following:
Is it a critical fail issue? Like all good companies, we address crashes, data issues and feature fails first, and in that order
Are you a VDN customer? Yes, developers that deploy our components get slight priority over other paying customers, followed by all paying customers
Are you asking for a cool and useful feature on MANTIS or our forum? MANTIS takes priority over forum, but we read both and have implemented many new features as a result
Even minor updates can contain new features. We don't always wait for a major release.
Installation & Start
Q: Where to download latest beta build?
Q: Where to discuss beta builds?
Q: How to report bugs and/or feature requests?
Q: How to uninstall beta?
In this Valentina WIKI the section Products exists. For each product you can find section Manual/Installation where it should be described how to install and uninstall a product.
In short:
-
VStudio.app – just trash it
VServer.app – stop VServer then trash folder /Library/VServer
Valentina ADK – you need trash two folders: “My Docukements/Paradigma Software/ADK” and “/usr/local/lib/vcomponents”. Also trash corresponded plugin from your IDE/Language.
Q: What is a 'night build' and how it differs from beta build?
Valentina team uses Continuous Integration to organize delivery of high quality product.
One part of this methodology is a night build. It is produced automatically from the current state of HotFix or NextRelase branch(es). It is uploaded into '/download/beta/night_buld' folder with name 'ver.ver.ver_(yy_mm_dd)'. So can be one or even two builds here. For example:
Previous night builds are being removed each time. Beta builds, on the other hand, live on FTP up to release.
A beta build is produced by Valentina Team when we see that some logical task is finished and is ready for testing by beta testers.
Purpose of a night_build is to ensure that all Valentina products can be built at the current state of GIT and nothing is broken. You may want to use a night_build, if you urgently need some fix, which you know is resolved. If you are not in rush, then you should prefer to use beta builds.
Using both Release and Beta Versions
We understand that it should be easy way to switch between RELEASE(x) and BETA(x+1). In this section we give some tips on how to make it easier.
The best way is to use some Virtual Machine (Virtual Box, Parallels, …) to install one more
OS + your development tools and use this as a branch of your development process for any purpose, including beta testing of third party products such as Valentina. Also it is a good idea to save a copy of such virtual machine in the good state, to be able recover everything in a few minutes.
If you do not want to work with virtual machines, there are other methods.
Q: I am using latest RELEASE version in active development. How can I use BETA build and do easy switch ?
Different issues exist for different combinations of operating system and development targets.
MAC VStudio.app – easily install and remove because it is self-contained package.
WIN VStudio – installer installs into separate folder “Paradigma Software/Valentina Studio 8”. This folder also contains everything. Registry is not touched.
VServer installers tend to install into the same folder, so this works as upgrade and existed databases are used. VServer also contains everything in the own folder. You may have several Valentina Servers installed with different names, and they can work in the same time, yet you must specify different ports for each one of them.
Q: How can I easily switch between vcomponents of different versions?
Our task is to have on the same computer TWO folders e.g. vcomponents_v4 and vcomponents_v5 and switch between them as easily as 1-2 mouse clicks. Lets think how this can be resolved on MAC and Linux at first. We should keep copies of both db in the place where OS do not search dlls. Lets choose HOME to be a such place.
1-0) Let you have version 4.x installed. So you have '/usr/local/lib/vcomponents' folder.
1-1) Create folder “HOME/v4”.
1-2) COPY '/usr/local/lib/vcomponents' to '~/v4/vcomponents.
1-3) COPY your plugin of v4 build to '~/v4'.
Now lets care about v5 build.
2-0) Install V5 build. Now you get again folder '/usr/local/lib/vcomponents'.
2-1) Create folder “HOME/v5”.
2-2) COPY '/usr/local/lib/vcomponents' to '~/v5/vcomponents.
1-3) COPY your plugin of v5 build to '~/v5'.
Now we have two folders side by side in the HOME folder of TWO different versions. It is simple enough to write two small scripts that copy corresponded version into the right place. We give an example below on how this script can look. You should make your own scripts corrected path to plugins folder and name of plugin you use.
switch_to_v4.sh
rm -R /usr/local/lib/vcomponents
cp ~/v4/vcomponents /usr/local/lib/vcomponents
cp ~/v4/v4rb.rbx /Applications/REALbasic/plugins
switch_to_v5.sh
rm -R /usr/local/lib/vcomponents
cp ~/v5/vcomponents /usr/local/lib/vcomponents
cp ~/v5/v4rb.rbx /Applications/REALbasic/plugins
On MAC OS X, you can also create two small AppleScripts using the same above SHELL commands, just called with help of do shell command “text of command”
and drop that scripts “HOME/Library/Scripts” folder to be able call them from MAC OS menu.''
On Windows you need to do all the same logical steps, you will just create not .sh scripts but .bat files.