Documentation and Products sections upgraded!
The update is now complete. Read on for more information about what's new.
We recently did a pretty significant update of the software that powers our "Products section":/products, as well as lots of bug fixes to the "Documentation section":documentation.
Developers that manage releases and projects should read below to make sure they update their projects to take advantage of the new options.
What's new for end-users?
Project page revamped with stable and experimental release sections
-- It's now very easy to see which releases are the stable and
recommended ones for production, as well as making it easy to find the
more cutting-edge versions for testing. It also has small niceties such as
linking to the code repository if there are no stable or experimental
releases available. A good example of this is the "Plone project page":/products/plone, which shows a stable release and the upcoming releases with release dates.
Clearer download options
-- The download pages now have big platform icons making it more obvious
which file to download when there are platform-specific packages.
"Go directly to project" pulldown
-- A pulldown menu on the products area front page gives an at-a-glance listing of all projects with releases (not necessarily final ones, just releases in progress) in alphabetical order, to make it easier to find a project when you know the name but not the category or URL.
Alpha/beta/candidate/final release states are now managed with workflow
-- This makes it easier to manage releases. In general, you will make one Release for each intended release of your product, and use the 'state' drop-down to release alpha, beta, candidate and final releases. Please see "the documentation":/documentation/tutorial/plone-software-center/release-phases for more details on how this works.
Alpha/beta/candidate markers in the release name
-- No more confusion about what state a project is in when coming from a search engine. It will also warn you if you are trying to download a release that is outdated.
All links go to the project
-- All the release links now go to the project itself, not the release — which makes it easier to understand what a product is all about before downloading it.
More relevant information
-- Important details such as version compatibility and relase dates are
displayed inline on the project page
Roadmap and Improvement Proposal enhancements
-- The releases now only list items that are in progress or complete.
Items still under discussion are listed in a separate table.
I'm a project manager for one of the projects listed, what do I need to do with my older releases?
Glad you asked. ;)
Essentially, the big new thing is that release states (alpha, beta, candidate, final) are now governed by workflow. We made a migration script that did the maturity → workflow state mapping for you, but there will be instances like this fictional example::
Some Project 1.2beta2 (Beta release)
Earlier, it was common to attach the beta2 or whatever designation to the version number. We have changed this so that you **only** have the version number in that field, and there is a different way of tracking release state — in this particular case:
- Beta state is indicated by workflow now → should be correct because of the migration script, but you should remove the 'beta2' part of the release number by editing the release
- Beta number has a separate property that is automatically incremented when you do a re-relase → in this case you would either:
- Select 'Re-release' from the workflow menu → the workflow increments the release number to 2, *or*
- Edit the 'Release number' property on the release (useful when it's alpha release 24 and you don't feel like hitting the 'Re-release' transition 23 times ;)
The end result will make your release title look like this::
Some Project 1.2 (Beta release 2)
Nifty.
If you don't feel like doing this, that's OK too - it'll just contain a bit more redundant information in the title. All your new releases will get this right.
More information can be found in the "release process documentation":/documentation/tutorial/plone-software-center/release-phases.
We hope you like the new and improved Plone Software Center and Plone Help Center! We're aiming for a 1.0 release of both of these projects as soon as it has been live on plone.org for a while, in case we missed out on any bugs. If you find any, please report these in the "Plone Software Center issue tracker":/products/plonesoftwarecenter/issues and the "Plone Help Center issue tracker":/products/plonesoftwarecenter/issues.
— Alexander Limi & Martin Aspeli