Downloads website
Created by: reiniervandijk
Something that struck me right now. If new Gendl releases (like 1585) continue to be backwards-incompatible (and although you might assume they will be fully compatible, experience dictates that they will not. Consider for example also the geometry kernel that might have changed significantly on new releases and for which it's practically impossible for you to assure compatibility although all your test cases might still work).
Shouldn't the downloads page on www.genworks.com show (recent) previous releases for download as well? I'm currently on 1581, and if I proceed to downloads only 1585 shows up. That one, as mentioned, does not serve my purpose, but unfortunately I can not anywhere find 1581-1584 ... anymore.
Also, consider a new student or employee that wants to continue working on legacy apps (something I see happening now with the MMG). If loaded into 1585, we get hundreds of (mostly geometry related) errors, and it's a huge pain to start in debugging mode immediately. If that user could've downloaded an older platform version, he might have at least been able to get things up and running and get some feeling for the capabilities of the application.
Every software provider will offer its users the ability to download previous releases, be it with a limited lifetime (fair enough). But you currently only offer the "trunk" version on your downloads website. In your defense, old versions obviously have a limited lifetime; you obviously don't want to continue providing support indefinitely for old stuff. However, at least notify users of the ending support period for old versions (consider how long Windows XP has been supported and still is). The current situation is opposite and the optimum somewhere in the middle.
I consider this a "bug" and not a "feature enhancement" of the software procurement process.
Imported comments:
By genworks on 2013-11-01 17:07:37 UTC
We are beginning a policy of LTS ("Long-term Support") releases, with an LTS release approximately every 12 months and interim releases approximately monthly. The specifics of this policy will be communicated separately.
The current gdl1585 is intended to be an LTS release (although a maintenance version of this will probably be made available as a full download).
At this point we ask that you please report (as separate Issues) any and all regressions you are experiencing with 1585 so we can work with you to get them resolved as quickly as possible. For any SMLib-related issues, we are able to run 1585 with the old SMLib kernel, so we should be able to isolate SMLib regressions/differences from GDL issues fairly rapidly.