Ruarí Ødegaard

Understanding Opera minor desktop releases

Monday, March 26, 2012 12:32:34 PM

I have seen some complaints on the forums and Desktop Team about 11.62 not fixing certain bugs that the Desktop Team are aware of (even where we have fixes in 12.00 snapshots). I therefore suspect that these people are missing the point of our minor releases.

Minor releases are not about fixing all known issues. Our goal is for each minor release to be better overall than the previous stable release. Minor releases typically address some of the major issues that were present in the previous stable build. Additionally we often throw in a few minor fixes, where the fix is trivial and/or low risk (so has a very small chance of introducing some other problem). Further known bugs will be addressed in a future release, either another minor release or a major release.

In summary, as long as the latest 11.62 release candidate is a better browser overall than 11.61, it has reached its goal and does not need to be held back.

P.S. Related to this some Opera Next users have suggested we focus only on 12.00. However, they should remember that 12.00 is still a fair way off and the overwhelming majority of our user base does not touch snapshots. Our regular (non-snapshot) users want (or need) the fixes that we have packaged for 11.62 now. Why should they wait to satisfy snapshot-only users, who are in the minority?

Losing a very old friendopera-next.SlackBuild (and opera.SlackBuild)

Comments

ClashCityRockerclashcityrocker # Monday, March 26, 2012 1:15:06 PM

Both 12 and 11.6x should be serviced which is not currently occurring.

12 has hit a roadblock and a, wall of silence. No roadmap and snapshot testers have no idea what it's plans, are. :-(

Charles SchlossChas4 # Monday, March 26, 2012 1:16:46 PM

I have only noticed one thing broken in 11.61 (the Security Info button from the address bar)

12 is still an alpha, to the public at least

I wonder if people know what it takes to write code

Charles SchlossChas4 # Monday, March 26, 2012 1:18:16 PM

ClashCityRocker did you get a 502 proxy error?

metude # Monday, March 26, 2012 1:37:56 PM

Making a two seperate builds is good thing for end-user. However, there's no 12.00 build after three weeks. I think you should make 12.00 build every Friday, just like 11.62. Also imho, no need to create labs builds. Any user even developer doesn't uses it. Just a one install after seeing what's happening, uninstalling lab build. There's nice things in labs but not in normal snapshot.

BTW: Karl Dubost wrote here, there'll be an publicly bug tracking system. So when will it be?

Ruarí Ødegaardruario # Monday, March 26, 2012 1:40:06 PM

Originally posted by clashcityrocker:

Both 12 and 11.6x should be serviced which is not currently occurring.

11.62 is about to be released so I can't see how it is not being serviced.

Originally posted by clashcityrocker:

12 has hit a roadblock and a, wall of silence. No roadmap and snapshot testers have no idea what it's plans, are. :-(

Originally posted by metude:

However, there's no 12.00 build after three weeks

A 12.00 snapshot was planned for the end of last week. However, we hit some snags with the integration of new features and fixes. Much of these have now been cleared up. You should see a 12.00 snapshot with several new and cool things very, very soon.

Charles SchlossChas4 # Monday, March 26, 2012 1:43:42 PM

I saw some teases of a new 12 on twitter, and knew it would be posted when its ready

Ruarí Ødegaardruario # Monday, March 26, 2012 1:45:39 PM

Originally posted by metude:

Also imho, no need to create labs builds. Any user even developer doesn't uses it.

Plenty of developers have told us that they value them. We can't add the features straight to Opera Next in the raw state you find them in Labs. So if there was no Labs you would just wait longer before you saw what we had been working on.

Ruarí Ødegaardruario # Monday, March 26, 2012 1:46:17 PM

The 12.00 snapshot is now live:

http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/2012/03/26/html5-css-64bit

I told you it was very, very soon!

Charles SchlossChas4 # Monday, March 26, 2012 1:56:43 PM

http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/2012/03/26/html5-css-64bit

new 12

Ruarí Ødegaardruario # Monday, March 26, 2012 1:59:35 PM

Originally posted by Chas4:

new 12

Yep, have fun!

Charles SchlossChas4 # Monday, March 26, 2012 4:42:02 PM

Originally posted by ruario:

Yep, have fun!

Is fun when you have both Labs builds, next and Opera stable all running at the same time?

For the Opera plug in container, can it be sandboxed on OS X 10.7 (might as also do it on windows) it would also improve security

metude # Monday, March 26, 2012 7:20:01 PM

Originally posted by Ruarí Ødegaard:

I told you it was very, very soon!

Thanks for answers, integration of labs builds, and Wahoooo!

Edit: Can give us some information about public bug tracker?

Ruarí Ødegaardruario # Monday, March 26, 2012 8:24:33 PM

Originally posted by metude:

Can give us some information about public bug tracker?

I know nothing about it but I am for the idea!

Ruarí Ødegaardruario # Tuesday, March 27, 2012 8:25:35 AM

Now that we have released I can also give you a little extra information. Scroll to the bottom of the changelog and look at the Security section.

Minor releases don't always include security updates but they often do. So security is often another reason why:

1. Minor updates must to be prioritised over the next major release
2. We can't wait too long

Jimtoyotabedzrock # Friday, March 30, 2012 2:56:18 AM

Originally posted by ruario:

Originally posted by metude:
Can give us some information about public bug tracker?
I know nothing about it but I am for the idea!

There is a public tracker that kind of sucks. Plus several people have there own lists of Opera rendering and crash bugs with example code. The tab interface for addons is not fixed in 12 btw.

Ruarí Ødegaardruario # Friday, March 30, 2012 9:52:57 AM

Sure, I am familiar with that. What I am not sure about is our plans for an official public tracker. However, as I said, on a personal level I would love to have a public tracker.