[ANN] Release 9.6.0 DP-1

[Mark Waddingham]

On 2019-11-26 17:51, Mark Wieder via use-livecode wrote:
> On 11/26/19 1:58 AM, panagiotis merakos via use-livecode wrote:
>> Dear list members,
>> 
>> We are pleased to announce the release of LiveCode 9.6.0 DP-1.
> 
> Really?
> A major point release while still in the queue there are
> 
> 186 pull requests for the engine (dating back to 2014)
> 42 pull requests for the IDE (dating back to 2016)

Its not a major point release, its a minor point release a la semantic 
versioning (https://semver.org/) - major.minor.maintenance.

It contains a number of changes which are definitely not suitable for a 
maintenance release (as they add or change functionality) but are 
critical to quite a number of people's apps (iOS player issues, in 
particular; but also some android issues too) [ otherwise they would 
have been in a 9.5.2! ]

[ Note: We do sometimes change functionality in a backwards incompatible 
fashion in minor point releases so we aren't strictly semver - but only 
if it is focused in specific areas - in this case, we had to remove some 
features from the mobile player control as we could not replicate them 
with the replacement OS APIs, and we had to tweak how you setup the 
camera control to stop iOS complaining about permissions. ]

At least 100 of the engine pull requests are either incomplete (no 
release note yet, no issue filed yet, no docs updates yet etc.) or WIP 
so are not mergeable as they stand. Probably half of the remainder are 
probably stale/no longer relevant/not going to get merged - so they 
probably could do with a cull (which is something for when I have a 
'spare' afternoon).

The IDE PRs (after a very brief perusal) look like about half are not 
yet complete and a few are WIP so not too dissimilar % wise.

We felt it better to get dp-1 almost feature complete, addressing the 
critical issues holding up people's apps first before lumping a lot of 
fixes from all over the place. The latter always risks a greater 
increase in the possibility of regressions and thus potential for a 
largely unusable build.

We're planning to get at least 20 further bugfixes merged for dp-2, and 
how many more than that depends on how testing goes, regression reports 
go and how much time we have before christmas :)

Warmest Regards,

Mark.

-- 
Mark Waddingham ~ mark at livecode.com ~ http://www.livecode.com/
LiveCode: Everyone can create apps