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Top-level
 Currently the semantics 😎 we use are: major: new functionality, bumped typically once per year, currently synchronized with the age of #OpenStreetMap , saved state changes only happen for major releases. minor: new functionality, typically 3-4 times a year, at least once prior to August for the mandatory update of the Android version we compile against, which can be anything from weeks of work to harmless. patch: configuration updates and bug fixes. 3 comments
Maintenance/patch versions are typically made available once per month, with the exception of months with major/minor releases. The patch releases typically contain updates to the default preset and imagery layer configuration. Both of these can be updated manually without an update, but that increases the amount of phoning home and simply updating the app avoids that. In the run up to a major or minor release we typically provide at least one beta/test version. Over the years feedback on these has dwindled to zero. It isn't as if there are no installs, we typically have multiple 100s of users on the beta versions, there is just literally no feedback. The issue fixing that does happen at this stage tends to nearly all be driven by dog fooding. Anyway, next major version 21 likely in Q1 2025. |
Gregory's Server
This works out to 12+ releases annually, not counting beta and test releases (more on those later).
Android apps need to be able to save their state and restart where they left off at any time.
For an #OpenStreetMap editor this is rather painful as there is a lot of state and some functionality changes require adding or changing what we save. While it would be nice to be to migrate seamlessly between versions, it is currently not feasible. That's why we only change this for major versions.