[Opensource] Expresso 4.1 Documentation/Release

[Support Jcorporate]

EXPRESSO 4.1 DOWNLOAD AVAILABLE
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Release Expresso 4.1 (Release Candidate 1) is now onsite and available
for download under the Expresso project.  

This release is marked Release Candidate 1 as a proactive measure in
case there are found to be any last minute issues with the build, i.e.
required libraries missing. If you find any issues let us know here on
this list or to support at jcorporate.com. 

This will give us a chance to correct any issues before issuing a final
release and announcing the release to the world at large. 

If after a few days, nobody encounters any build errors, we will mark
the exact same upload as the final release.

STABLE 4.1.X RELEASE TO BE MAINTAINED
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Once the final release is made we'll start working on 4.1.1. Non
critical bugs and annoyances are going to be relegated to a 4.1.1
release which we're looking for a date of 3 weeks after 4.1 final is
released. 

One of the beneficial changes we are making as of Expresso 4.1 is a
commitment to maintaining the last stable release with ongoing bug fixes
for our many production users. 

This means at some point branching and maintaining two versions both
4.1.X and 4.2. The benefit to number of production users using Expresso
justifies the additional work required. 

MORE FREQUENT PRODUCTION RELEASES
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As you know the ongoing additional of features creates a long ongoing
testing cycle. There needs to be a cut-off much earlier to get out
releases more frequently. So for each development cycle we will define
the "critical path" by 2-3 iterations (new planned features as per
Roadmap). During the development of these features we will incorporate
additional contributed features. Once the "critical path" items are
completed we will "close" the release to adding new features (they will
be added to the next release) except those that are additional new files
(features) that do not affect existing code and can be marked
"experimental", i.e. new tags. Testing will be finalized quicker this
way and hence "aim" for a new release every few months. This will result
positively with a quicker release cycle and users will be able to use
their contributed code in a production release that much faster. 

We'd like to thank everyone who has helped others and help made this a
"real" community and to those that have made contributions back to the
improvement of Expresso. 

Regards
The Jcorporate Group