Michael Thelen ([info]saganist) wrote,
@ 2007-11-21 00:35:00
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Current mood: peaceful
Entry tags:zyzzyva

Zyzzyva 1.0.6 released
I've created a new bug-fix release of Zyzzyva. The version number is 1.0.6. Man, I always forget how long it takes to create a release for four different platforms, even when the release is a small one. Fortunately, thanks to VMWare Fusion, I was able to create builds right on my laptop for every platform except PowerPC. Wicked cool.

This release fixes the crashing that was happening on Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard), and it also fixes the disappearing window problem on Windows, where occasionally Zyzzyva is running but the window is not visible on the screen. Man, that was an annoying one. I got more emails about that bug than all others combined! Let's hope that never happens again.

I've realized that I probably won't be able to accomplish everything I would like to do for Zyzzyva 1.1, because with my very limited free time in which to complete a large list of features, the release would never happen. I would rather release often with fewer new features in each release, than release giant updates once a year. So now I have a list of two, maybe three, things I want to accomplish in 1.1. That may be doable in a reasonable amount of time. I hope. I've learned not to make promises either, so this is not a promise. :-)


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[info]crosstables
2007-11-21 01:30 pm UTC (link)
Nice job, as always!

Is there a way to automate your builds so that (besides for the PowerPC) you can create releases with a single batch command? A guy named Joel Spolsky has written a lot on programming, and the ability to build in one step is an item on his excellent Joel Test.

I highly recommend his book "Joel on Software", which I found very inspiring when I was feeling kinda burnt out on the whole "programming" thing.

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[info]saganist
2007-11-21 03:57 pm UTC (link)
Thanks. I love Joel and I would love a one-step build process. Right now the process is about as automated as I know how to make it - I have a script for each platform that checks out and builds. The major time-consuming parts are setting up the environment (it seems something has always changed or needs to change, usually upgrading the Qt version everywhere), and testing. Especially for this version where I couldn't directly test on Leopard myself, it took a while to create several candidate builds, point others to them, and wait for feedback. Not all releases take as long as this one did, but they all take at least a few hours, mainly because I want to make sure I haven't screwed anything up. Which apparently I didn't do well enough for this one - I've already received several reports of Zyzzyva hanging while trying to create the database. Whoops! Off to do some bug-hunting...

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[info]saganist
2007-11-21 07:45 pm UTC (link)
Just as a note to anyone coming across this conversation who may be afraid to download Zyzzyva 1.0.6 because of the bug mentioned above... the bug is now fixed. Download away!

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