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Releases difference! Please explain key difference between 2.4.7 & 2.5.3 & 2.6.0 releases?

Added by Dev Full stack over 9 years ago

Whats difference between 2.6.0 (2014-10-21) & 2.5.3 (2014-10-21) & 2.4.7 (2014-10-21)?
Is it different branches with different features or something else?


Replies (2)

RE: Releases difference! Please explain key difference between 2.4.7 & 2.5.3 & 2.6.0 releases? - Added by Mischa The Evil over 9 years ago

Alex Alex wrote:

Is it different branches with different features or something else?

You are close. I'll explain. Redmine basically uses [MAJOR.MINOR.TINY] versioning. As such Redmine 2.6.0 is the newest minor (a.k.a. feature) release1 whereas Redmine versions 2.5.3 and 2.4.7 are tiny (a.k.a. maintenance) releases of previous minor release cycles (taken from their respective stable branches, source:/branches/2.4-stable and source:/branches/2.5-stable).

New features are not included in tiny releases, they only contain security and bugfixes. New features are implemented on source:/trunk and, with the creation of a new minor stable release branch, introduced in new minor, stable feature releases. Sometimes changes are so large (think about rewrites for new major releases of the Rails framework on which Redmine is build upon), that they need an increase of the major number part (e.g. Redmine 2.x.x opposed to 1.x.x changed Rails version requirement from 2.3.x to 3.2.x and as will happen again with Redmine 3.x.x (Rails 3.2.x to 4.1.x)).
As a result of this, requirements for the current latest Redmine releases will continue to change over time (ranging in severity) and as such can break (API) compatibility with plugins, themes, third-party apps, etc. Therefor it is very important to make sure you read RedmineUpgrade (and its references to specifically RedmineInstall#Requirements) before you start an upgrade. The other thing that is important is that you make sure that any piece of third-party software you use within your Redmine instance (this is can be a plugin, a theme, an app, etc) is compatible with the Redmine version you are about to upgrade to. If you're at the stage that you have your own custom Redmine core code patches applied yourself (this should, at the least, be done in some SCM system), you may need to modify them to match the new instance environment. This can include all software development process activities2.

Regarding the differences feature-wise: you can have a look for yourself in the issues tracked here (which can be preferred over the Changelog in some situations), using some generic filters (+tracker=feature|patch,+status=closed,+version=version,-category=translations): References:

Regards,

Mischa,

1 and simultaneously the last minor release; the next release, taken from a future 3.0.0-stable branch which itself will be taken from the main development line (source:/trunk), will be a new major release (3.0.0). So Redmine 2.7.x won't exist, while Redmine 2.6.1 (a tiny release from the source:/branches/2.6-stable branch is already on the roadmap.

2 like new requirement assessment (with possible outcome a change of specification), redesign of modifications, reimplementations of the modifications, (integration-) testing of modifications and the effectual redeployment of these patches

    (1-2/2)