Release early, release often - 3.0.1 is out!

Release early, release often - 3.0.1 is out!

Friday, July 30, 2010 Pablo Santos news 0 Comments

We read about how google is going to speed up Chrome releases and somehow we got jealous, so we decided to release a new official Plastic today!. So, a few days after 3.0 we're releasing 3.0.1.

Ok, the truth is that we do create weekly releases, but they normally don't go public, but there are a few things we wanted to make public asap (and of course we didn't have time to put them in 3.0...), so here we go...

Refactored items menu

The context menu on the items view was getting bigger and bigger and we almost didn't notice about it. But a few weeks ago we were doing usability testing with a small group of developers and we so it was simply enough. So we've decided to change a few things there. Please check here the changes. I know it's going to be a small pain for current users, but I can tell you in a few minutes you get used to the new smaller menu.

Reworked context menu for branches

The same as above holds true for branches... Again the menu was getting too big. So we made it smaller, regrouped some options differently and so on.

Multi-prefix support for the OnTime integration

It was requested several times by users, so we took some time during this sprint to implement it: now you're not restricted to "bugs" when linking branches to OnTime artifacts. You know, a small step for us but a big one for some of our users :-P

SSL support

An old friend that comes back. We reworked a little bit the support for SSL and now it's up and running again. We'll be posting an entry soon to explain how it exactly works and how to get it up and running. Now it is able to make the Plastic server listen in more than one port (ok, this was possible already) and one of them can be SSL.

SQL compact edition support

Yes, we're kind of addicts to implementing support for new database backends, so we just added SQL CE to the group. It is still a little bit obscure to configure (I mean, no doc, so if you want to use it send us an email) but part of the team is using it already down here for their replicated servers on the laptops (while the other part uses sqlite, including myself).

Merge tool re-styling

Probably the coolest change. It was "code-complete" for 3.0 but not yet fully tested, so we decided to wait a little bit more. But now is ready. What's new:

We've simplified the GUI, less buttons == easier to use.

We added a hint window so we try to explain a little bit how the 3-way merge works for newcomers. I'm fully aware hints are not as good as self explaining GUIs, but believe me 3-way merge is easier said than explained :O.

To solve manual conflicts selecting the default proposal Plastic does, you need now to click on "mark as resolved". Before just "passing through" got it solved, which was not clear. Of course by selecting or unselecting a contributor you set it as solved too. And now there's information on the top of the window explaining whether the conflict is solved or not.

Here's the screenshot for the new hint window:



And the new merge window:

Bug fixes

There are always bug fixes, of course! I'd suggest you to check the release notes online, but the most important one is an issue we had in 3.0 when uninstalling on 32 bit Windows machines. It's not a show-stopper but it complained about being unable to remove a 64bits key from the Windows registry. It is solved now. It was an issue with the installer, but a painful one if you're uninstalling 3.0... :(

Enjoy 3.0.1!!!

Pablo Santos

I'm the CTO and Founder at Códice.
I've been leading Plastic SCM since 2005. My passion is helping teams work better through version control.
I had the opportunity to see teams from many different industries at work while I helped them improving their version control practices.
I really enjoy teaching (I've been a University professor for 6+ years) and sharing my experience in talks and articles.
And I love simple code. You can reach me at @psluaces.