[frooyo]

Curious to know how many more ALPHA builds to expect before the builds move into BETA.

We are currently on build 6, I see a soon to be released ALPHA v7 is in the pipe.

Not trying to hold the bbPress team to a specific # of releases or anything, just curious if we have just a few more ALPHA’s or like a dozen more before BETA begins

For what it’s worth, I have been using ALPHA v6 since release without any problems.

[_ck_]

Dozens more. At least that what you should be assuming.

But more importantly, alpha 7 will break roughly one third to one half of the plugins for bbPress (seriously) so if you rely on any, you won’t be using more alphas or using the beta any time this year.

(and please stop asking questions like this, they are pointless)

[frooyo]

@ _ck_

How is this a pointless question?

Simply saying that bbPress 1.0 will be finished “when it’s ready”, is an absolute lack of leadership.

And using Trac’s Roadmap functionality but not updating it to be current, since it states bbPress is 6 months behind, indicates also a lack of commitment by the development team to push this project forward.

Also, don’t you find it interesting that you have had to make the comment before numerous times and say “people, please stop asking for a release date”.

https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/eta-of-bbpress-10#post-21764

I’m not even asking for a specific date, just a better understanding of the roadmap. If people are constantly asking you the same question over and over again, isn’t that a signal to you that people are: concerned with the current development state and/or unclear as to what the roadmap current entails.

Unfortunately, not everyone here is a developer. So simply stating “why don’t you help code” is not an option always. The best many of us can do is simply use the ALPHA version and report bugs if we see any … which we do.

P.S.

Also, one thing good about roadmaps is that it holds people accountable. Having a roadmap in Trac that, as you have stated before is “meaningless”

https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/yet-another-10-timeline-roadmap-question#post-22122

is a complete embarrassment to this development project. I hate saying that, truly, because I greatly enjoy bbPress.

But if you cannot even update a simply Roadmap, now 6 months out dated, indicates to me that bbPress 1.0 is vaporware … regardless of how many Trac ticket check-ins you have in any given week.

I’m not alone on this, Joel Spolsky include keeping Roadmaps up-to-date on his 12 steps for better coding

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html

[_ck_]

You keep quoting other people and their nonsense lists.

Those are commercial programmers with commercial projects.

bbPress is free and makes no money for the people who make it available.

(Joel isn’t even a programmer according to Wikipedia, but was a manager on Excel for Microsoft, so he couldn’t be more opposite in thinking to open-source web based code development – he blogs about concepts to sell his company’s commercial, closed-source software so what he says is motivated by profit)

Let’s say bbPress 1.0 final was available tomorrow.

But half the plugins won’t work with it, so are you going to fix them?

Let’s say Sam gives into your pressure and releases bbPress 1.0 beta early – but because of the rush there are bugs or security issues – are you going to fix them? Are you going to adjust the plugins for bbPress 1.1 because of rushed release on bbPress 1.0 ? I’m not.

I can give you my timeline as far as plugins – January 2010 is my estimated completion date for plugin compatibility with bbPress 1.0 – this is not an exaggeration. Hopefully this will satisfy your quest for deadlines on free, non-commercial programs and let you plan accordingly.

So if you aren’t using any plugins, I guess you’ll be all set for the next alpha and beta releases, nag away.

[frooyo]

@ _ck_

Thanks for the reply.

Nope, I don’t use plugins.

As for that topic, your response makes it sound like a large reason why bbPress is slow to release is due to the fact that plugins will break.

Maybe I’m a little confused here but what’s the problem with that?

Plug-ins are just that, “plugins”. They are not part of the core product.

Just an observation, but it seems to me that something that is not apart of the core product, like plug-ins, shouldn’t slow down the release of the core product.

(Especially plug-ins developed for a non-stable, non-1.0 release)

Just my 2 cents

[sumit1988]

totally understand fooyo. And i agree

[_ck_]

Sam does not delay bbPress because of plugins or design it in one way or another for them other than to make the hooks or filters they need.

If you don’t use plugin then just use the SVN with the trunk and you can have weekly updates as Sam makes them.

[Sam Bauers]

How many more alphas? I don’t think we’ll get up to 10, but if a bad bug sneaks into one of the alphas it’s possible that you could see two or three in a week. I’m not doing any point releases of alphas (e.g. alpha-6.1) so by the time we are done we may have 10 or 20, it’s hard to say.

Basically we aren’t going to beta until all the new functionality is in place. During the beta period I’m hoping to just be doing stability and speed improvements. The Trac tickets are a good guide of what needs to be done before beta is released. As long as there is significant stuff on that list under 1.0-beta there is no beta release.

In any case, the beta will not be “stable”, it will only be feature complete. So it still won’t be recommended for production use. Things will be accelerating for bbPress soon due to some internal work at Automattic. This is occupying a lot of my time right now, but it will all be fed back into bbPress in the near future.

And yes alpha-7 will be a commit bomb that will potentially break a lot of things. I’m trying to minimise damage, but the API will be a little unstable for a couple of alpha releases. I don’t recommend that plugin devs rush to make their plugins work until these fairly fundamental shifts in the API are complete.

[_ck_]

Sam please break whatever you feel is necessary in the core to make things work better in logic, and not worry about backwards compatibility. Broken is broken in my book and I’m still going to delay doing anything until 1.0 is final (and the 1.0.1 bug fixes are sketched out)

I’d rather you break in any way needed for the right reasons and not be saddled with backwards compatibility like WordPress did (and look at what a mess it’s become).

For what my opinion is worth, I’d rather you not call it beta until it’s production ready because you just know that hundreds, if not thousands, will jump on anything labelled beta and expect it to work near perfectly, as well as any plugins they currently use.

Heck if the alpha numbers have to go into triple digits, let it be, at least the people who need to feel there is constant progress will feel better as the numbers get bigger.

Last but not least I think there should be an incredibly strong warning to people that there is no downgrading from 1.0 to 0.9 once they upgrade because of the db changes.

[kevinjohngallagher]

Last but not least I think there should be an incredibly strong warning to people that there is no downgrading from 1.0 to 0.9 once they upgrade because of the db changes.

Can i second this?

this is the sort of communication and information that would be really really helpful to people, and also maybe minimise any possible support issues.

[_ck_]

Well let me technically correct that people can probably immediately downgrade because the old tables are left in place but any further changes to the db would be lost (as far as meta data) making downgrading infeasible to just “try out for a day” on a live site.

[Malice]

I was dumb enough to install an alpha version on a running website.

What are the odds that I will be able to keep all my topics and accounts by the time bbpress hits 1.0 stable?

[deadlyhifi]

What are the odds that I will be able to keep all my topics and accounts by the time bbpress hits 1.0 stable?

I’d say that this would be the most fundamental aspect of backwards compatibility, and since the accounts table is based on WordPress there should be no issue there. Equally, topics, posts, times, etc. can’t have too many differences to warrant non-compatibility.

Things will be accelerating for bbPress soon due to some internal work at Automattic. This is occupying a lot of my time right now, but it will all be fed back into bbPress in the near future.

It’s really good to hear this. May I presume the folks over BuddyPress are getting involved?

As it stands I am running v1.06 on a fairly large website (due to various reasons I had to do it) and have found it to be very stable at high volume. My biggest issue has been fending off feature requests from the users. The biggest being ability to sort by topic id as well as last response time.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who is working on bbPress. I think it is a very promising and exciting project that will, coupled with WP and BuddyPress, be a very powerful software.

[sumit1988]

thanks a lot sam for this post. Finally we got some information instead of _ck_’s: “why shouldnt you ask something like that”.

@ ck: Sorry buddy, i really appreciate your plugin work and your -try- to support ppl, but in this case (info about 1.0 beta/stable), you’re going the wrong way.

Thanks again Sam!

[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

I suspect _ck_’s had it up to here with the same people asking the same questions. It does get a little wearing and if I were to link to every post that someone asked this ‘How long…’ question… well I may find the practical limit to post length Exaggeration a little, yes, but not as much as you’d think.

FWIW, I read Joel on Software frequently, but I disagree with him when it comes to the Open Source Solution. Locked Down software, like Office and such, are a totally different beast, and most Open Source developments start out herky-jerky (like BB and WP) and eventually smooth out into a sort of update schedule. But you can’t do that until you have a baked product, and when you’re re-inventing things, you can’t give a firm deadline because there is no way you can quantify the time it takes to be inventive. Open Source created a new development roadmap, and that map is still very young and very tentative. It took a decade or more to get commercial software where it is today. Open Source has been around since the 60s, but it didn’t really become a ‘thing’ until 1998. And Open Source development, where anyone can pitch in? Whooof! A lot of folks never even saw that coming as more than a passing fancy.

Now Lorelle (from Lorelle on WordPress, a name many folks may be familiar with) has intimated that this will be a ‘big’ year for bbPress. What does that mean? Dunno, but I suspect now that WP is a grownup, it’s time to burn creative juices over on bbPress. Which still does not mean you’ll get bb 1.0/release any time soon.

Be patient. Read the posts people have already made. Follow the bbPress blog. You’ll get your answer when you do

[kevinjohngallagher]

I think we all love _ck_ for her plugins, and her attempts to help the community before and after she was made a Mod, but if she and other Mods have “had it up to here” with the same posts being made and the same questions being asked all the time; maybe it’s time to change the website which gives this the false /conflicting/confusing information?

We can’t tell people to look at Trac for info on bugs/releases/roadmaps, and then complain when they get confused by the conflicting information.

I’m also don’t find Joel’s blog too helpful, but that’s not to say that some project management isn’t necessary simply because it’s an open source project. But rather than taking the comments about leadership/ownership of the project on the chin, it’s apparently easier to discredit/deflect from the man making the comments – i mean, seriously, who cares if wikipedia doesn’t list Joel as a developer? Does that mean the man doesn’t know that keeping Trac/Gantt chart/documentation/bug list etc up to date greatly increases productivity and keeps a project focussed?

Or is it because he worked for “Microsoft, so he couldn’t be more opposite in thinking to open-source web based code development”. Are we just presuming now that if you happen to take a wage that you’re fundamentally against free or open source software? I take a wage for a company that wont be releasing it’s software, am i now in the “couldn’t be more opposite in thinking to open-source web based code development” simply because of my day job? Or is it easier to shoot down people making comments based on presumptions moderators have about anyone who places feeding their wives and children above working a 9-5 for an open source software foundation?

I see, it’s cos it’s easier to shoot down questions and comments rather than have a discussion.

(btw _ck_, the guy left Microsoft over 9 years ago. 9. years. maybe we can let that one go.)

@Ipstenu:

Hey dude, can i ask where you got his info from:

Now Lorelle (from Lorelle on WordPress, a name many folks may be familiar with) has intimated that this will be a ‘big’ year for bbPress.

It seems great news, but in the same way that Sam lets us know that he’s been focussed on non-BBpress projects 7 replies down a random forum post; it worries me that finding out this cool info is getting harder and harder.

Follow the bbPress blog. You’ll get your answer when you do

I kinda hope that’s tongue-in-cheek , with 5 posts in 6 months (and 3 of them within 3 days of each other), the BBpress blog isn’t quite the bastian of information you might think. All it does it tell us when there’s a new release. It’s not not a blog as much as a list of release dates.

[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

@kevinjohngallagher – I got it from the horse’s mouth. She posted it on her blog and in her Blog Herald post last Friday.

WordPress News, scroll down to bbPress On Fire.

And yeah, the ‘follow the blog’ was partly tongue-in-cheek (I know updates are sparse), but also serious (as it is the best place to get ‘this has changed’ news). The blog will be updated when there’s news to update. And if there are long gaps between posts, well, it’s not a dev-blog. The forums are kind of the dev blog right now.

[_ck_]

The news about bbPress on that blog is just rehashing news elsewhere (and it’s a month out of date at that). 2009 will indeed be a big year for *development* for bbPress 1.0 – but that doesn’t mean 1.0 should be adopted for use on live sites in 2009.

I don’t know how to explain it any further that 1.0 is not simply a continuance of 0.9, it’s about 50% rewritten. 0.9 was reaching a certain maturity but now virtually every major function has been changed in some way that makes it more complex (for the same functionality).

You’re not using code in 1.0 that’s been proven stable in 0.9, you are using code that’s been rewritten to mimic the functionality of 0.9 with complexity added to force the use of BackPress (essentially WordPress core functions). Not only does the added bulk slow things down, but it degrades the proven stability that was in 0.9 because the new code is not thoroughly tested.

You shouldn’t be nagging about 1.0 over here, the key question you should be nagging developers about is over on the WordPress side: When will WordPress use BackPress? If it’s not going to (anytime soon) what was the point in rushing to break a stabilized bbPress to make it use Backpress and why are people rushing to use bbPress 1.0 when it’s not finished?

I think there was only one problem: it’s that 0.9 never got support for the cookies in WP 2.7 so way too many people rushed to 1.0 despite heavy warnings not to do so, somehow thinking they know better, or worse, that they’d just nag about any problems they have and get some kind of priority fix.

I am considering releasing a plugin to make 0.9 work with WP 2.6-2.8 cookies to stop this nonsense once and for all however people still won’t be able to downgrade unless I also make another plugin to downgrade the database also. But it’s a lot of work and I have little motivation since I would never use WP 2.7+ myself.

[sumit1988]

nobody cares if bbPress stable will be ready in many months _ck_. I think the biggest problem here is this:

The community: we, us, who use bbPress (alpha or not) report bugs, try all, use your plugins, make it public… we are also a piece of the “raise of bbPress”. We are all very thankfull for the work that you guys do, but what if nobody use it? It would be work for nothin. And it’s just a thing of respect and good will to get the community informated. So if e.g. you don’t know when its ready, dont write “stop asking” or “ready when ready”… try instead “i don’t know” …? So all of us will wait for a reply from someone that knows. Like Sam. And he replied. And it was really informative for us all. Lots of ppl like me are a little happier now, so where is the problem? Chill…

(sorry if you cant understand my english)

and just for my personal info: are you (_ck_) working on bbPress itself? or “just” the plugins? Because why reply you always to this questions if the question is not for you (when you’re not working on core product)?

[johnmc]

Speaking for myself, and possibly a large number of others, the main reason for wanting to use v1.0 is WordPress integration. If there was a plugin for 0.9 to make it play nicely with newer versions of WordPress, then that would be awesome and might keep the rabble happy for a while. As it stands, the only choice if you’re running a version of WordPress that’s any way recent is to go with the bbPress Alpha.

[Sam Bauers]

I’d just like to say that _ck_ is well qualified to answer questions about just about every aspect of bbPress, including this topic. I can’t fault the information she gave in her replies here.

@Malice

You should be able to upgrade from anything as far back as perhaps bbPress 0.8 to any later version. Upgrade paths are generally kept smooth, but downgrading is an issue.

@johnmc

I’ve looked into making 0.9 compatible with WP2.7, but the changes it would introduce would probably make 0.9 less stable than 1.0-alpha and take a long time to complete.

[John James Jacoby]

If I can throw out some input, having felt both sides of this debate multiple times, I think the bbPress audience is just looking for a little more information than maybe what is presented publically, and hoping that maybe it’s delivered with a little more public relations than it is firm moderation.

Lets take a moment to be honest with each other. The bbPress website, as a whole, is in bad shape. The documentation is old and outdated, transversing multiple versions and subversions of code with no WordPress style codex to whisper about. To offer a bit of perspective to everyone, bbPress is following WordPress in it’s development style, and remember that bbPress isn’t even 1.0, and WordPress is at 2.7. Where do you think bbPress will be when it is at version 2.7?

While we’re all used to how WordPress works and how convenient it is to have years of experience and knowledge to build off of, bbPress just isn’t to that level yet, and it isn’t fair to expect for it to be.

I feel that the bbPress site needs a serious update, just like the WordPressMU site does. There needs to be some uniformity and some solid public relations going on to get the message across to answer these questions before they even begin to be thoughts in a users mind, and no offense to anyone but a sticky topic isn’t enough, even though there isn’t a sticky anymore. Even if the product is free, it’s still a product, there are reputations on the line, and ultimately someone is investing in Automattic to help pay Sam’s bills, so someone needs to be nice to the customers, even if they’re not paying a dime.

Sam, if you’re listening, I’d love to help restyle bbPress.org to help it more accurately match WordPress.org/com. I would have suspected this was something done by someone specific within Automattic, but I think I remember reading that you styled it specifically yourself. If it will help take some of the burden off of you, I’d love to help out in anyway that I can.

[lookfab]

_ck_ paints a pretty bleak picture for bbpress 1.0. A pointless rewrite of 50% of the code, which neutralizes much of the benefit of having the beta in the wild for all this time. Extra bulk and slower performance.

Sam’s response reads like a carefully worded validation.

Sounds like a lack of information is the least of our problems.

[sumit1988]

nothin more to this post from me. I just a want to apologise to -ck-. I didn’t get (until now) that ur female. I have spoken to you like you were male. I’m sorry for that.

And i really don’t wanted to attack you personally if you think. I just criticized the information about this magic question that you give. I also understand that you’re done with it.

Keep up the good work guys. All of you.

[frooyo]

To help get more people actively involved, why doesn’t bbPress host a “bug fixing marathon weekend” and offer a prize to the most bugs fixed within a 48 hour period.

Or a contest to redesign the web site.

Or a contest to improve the documentation.

Just trying to come up with ideas to help.