Monday, November 5, 2012

Upgrading software


Briefly, upgrade your software only when you want to take advantage of new features or security/stability fixes. That seems obvious, but a lot of people (especially people new to the idea of maintaining a software system) still think that "bleeding-edge" is the way to go, when that just isn't the case. There's nothing to be gained by putting your system in an unstable state at a whim or for the vacuous accomplishment of having the newest thing.

Furthermore, when you do upgrade your software, make sure you have a path back to the previous version so that if something doesn't work well with your system (and there will definitely be times this happens), you can revert without too much hassle. Too many times have I made some install that didn't have a sane un-install procedure--files flying all over the file system, and the only record of where they were supposed to go in a binary executable. Yuck. Avoid using binary executables for setup when you can and it'll save you trouble. And for god's sake, don't make them for your software, but make an install shell script if it wouldn't inconvenience your users. Sure theres the problem of platform incompatibility that comes with that approach, but that's true in any cross-platform system, and there are other ways of dealing with those problems.

Remember, remember the 5th of November...(tee hee)
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