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I was just reading through the release notes for the new Cascades SDK beta 4 and noticed that the number of known issues is still huge. How is this going to be ready to release as gold in 12 days? Anyone know better than I if this is normal or not?
https://developer.blackberry.com/cas.../releasenotes/
Work on releases like this proceed to some extent in parallel internally, at least in most places I've worked where anything like this went on. The release intended for the "Gold" one was already well under way long before this beta 4 release came out, with very likely scores of additional bugs already fixed.
They can't simply apply each bug fix directly to a single master set of code instantly as soon as each one is resolved... that would imply no system-level or integration testing, and we'd be getting really really crappy quality compared to what we are getting.
So yeah, totally normal. In fact, for all we know, the "Gold" one is already locked down and being tested internally, with no additional non-critical bug fixes planned.
For comparison, this release appears to have been built on November 9... 20 days ago.
Why would they release the beta 4 at all then and not just go straight to Gold? The timing of these 2 releases just seems strange considering there were like 2 months between all the other releases. Also does the Gold version of the SDK essentially mean the operating system is complete or are they only related?
I don't think anyone has answers for you that don't involve a fair bit of speculation. On that note, there was the Jam Asia event to consider, which is still going on. If they'd just gone straight to Gold, they would presumably not have had a release last night (which was about noon in Bangkok time, probably just after the keynote). That would likely have counted for quite a bit, since nothing gets us developers excited more than a new SDK and Dev Alpha update. (Well, except seeing the product ship. ;-) )
I can say for sure that Gold means "complete" either... because it will never be complete of course. I suppose you meant "cast in stone, not changing one iota prior to the phones shipping"? If that was the question, I really have no idea. I doubt it, but it's certainly a possibility. On the other hand, the Gold label we see in the roadmap, and indeed the whole roadmap concept (those airline "arrival boards") are really about the SDK and all the APIs developers will be using. That is probably supposed to be polished enough by the Gold release for us to build final versions of our apps. The OS itself... well, I could see that being worked on for some weeks yet, but whether that's possible depends on many things I don't know. Like their process with these new phones for flashing the final code into them... will they make new purchasers do an immediate OTA update? I suspect not, but if they do then they obviously don't need the final release until a few days before shipping the first ones.