Making a new release is mandatory!

[giannis]

hi all,

although i am a new user of CB, i loved it from the
first time i saw it. I worked in the past with Eclipse
& KDevelop but being a VC fanatic, i simply found
those products misfunctional despite their heavy
development. 

now, this is something that troubles me with CB
and have sent an e-mail in the past to the project
leader yiannis.

I believe that making a release is mandatory
no matter how many bugs are still there.
- This can be a reference point for future releases
and a starting point for newcomers.
- I am sure that in the preparation of RCs many
bugs will be resolved and the source get somehow
cleaned up.
- Simply, following the nightly builds where a new
feature might break the rest of the source code
is very tiring for everyone (both users & developers).
- I am sure that making a stable release will attract
even more people to CB.

setting a date for a release won't suffice. we need
to freeze any development for new features and
concentrate on bugs for a short period!

best wishes,
giannis

[dr snuggles]

Creating a new inbetween release is being discussed quite frequently. Mostly, the answer was: RC3 will be there when it's ready (yes, a cliché).

I have to agree with you that a new release has several big advantages:
1) Experienced users know for sure that with this release all major features are working in most cases (as in: the debugger is not temporarily disabled, but there might be a still corner case).
2) Easy to install package, without the hassle to get and extract all the seperate parts for MinGW + GDB + C::B + two extra DLL files. Therefore, it is more user friendly to install.
3) Because it is reliable and user friendly to install, more people will give it a try like you mentioned.

But is this also the right time to make a Release Candidate? :? This is something the developers know, for which they probably have a roadmap or so (I can't find the one for RC3 though). Maybe it is time for an inbetween solution, as in:
Nightly Build >> Beta release >> Release Candidate >> Final
I'm kinda missing the beta releases, which are quite common for other software products.

Actually, I think we only care about RC3 because it would be nice if more users could try the excellent C::B. I don't know of anyone who uses it, although it is a lot better compared to the other IDE's I have given a shot. That's all for my two cents .