I'm liking the new 'project compatibility' feature in the Our projects area - it's a big step in a very helpful direction. However, I had a couple of concerns about versioning and how this is handled, and just wanted to open it up to a little discussion.
I had the situation today whereby I needed to install the Google Maps datatype package (http://our.umbraco.org/projects/backoffice-extensions/google-maps-datatype) on a 4.6 installation. Now, the package notes from Darren and Lee are typically helpful here because they say explicitly that the latest version of the package (v2) will only work on Umbraco 4.7. For anything older, package v1.2 is recommended. So this gives me my answer - I'll install v1.2 in this project.
However, the official project compatibility area - if I'm understanding it correctly - wasn't much help here because it doesn't seem to take account of the different package versions. What would be great would be to have an instance of the project compatibility table for each version of a package. If this isn't done, then it will also have implications going forward. e.g. Version 3 of the maps package is released and suddenly it doesn't work with Umbraco 4.7 even though 100% of the votes suggest that it's compatible (admittedly over time it would get updated and swing towards a lower compatibility percentage - but that's not particularly useful). Maybe (very likely) I've got this wrong and when a new version of a package is released it'll start the compatibility chart from scratch. Either way though, it'd be handy to keep track of this data for people who are set with a specific version of Umbraco and need to see backwards compatibility.
The HQ have probably got this all in hand, but I just wondered if anyone had investigated it further and could shed any light on this side of things. Like I say, it's already great to have this and I've already been updating the compatibility for the packages I've used in the last few weeks and it's been working very nicely indeed. It would be totally amazing to have full version compatibility - or at least clarity on version compatibility too :)
Okay, so to follow up with my example above, I actually installed v1.2 of the Google Maps package on Umbraco 4.6 and it broke. I uninstalled it and tried v2.0.2 - against the advice of the notes - and that worked perfectly. So, I've now updated the compatability chart to say that this package (version latest?) works with 4.6, but then there's no way to warn others that the older version doesn't work with 4.6. So the compatability chart is missing an important angle as far as I'm concerned.
Databases are another thing which would be really helpful. I know some packages which work with MSSQL but the same package version doesn't work with MySQL or SQLCE, so that would be really good to consider logging too if possible.
Thanks for the feedback and I'm glad that you are enjoying the new feature. We actually track the votes against the current release of the package but report on overall. I can see your point regarding confussion over which version of the package the version voting applies to and will discuss this further as it would be possible to do what you are saying regarding providing the information on a per version of the package basis.
Regarding the database versions we currently dont track this information so cant report on it unfortunately.
I just had this same question/concern about how the "Project Compatibility" feature works, and found this thread wondering if there have been any updates/improvements in this area since it was last mentioned 5 months ago?
In my own humble opinion, Dan is absolutely correct in how misleading it might be to find a package that claims "100% compatiblity" with a given version, only to find out later this was pertaining to an older version of the package--- while the latest version of the package I just downloaded is actually, indeed not compatible!
Thank you for any insight regarding or updates pertaining to this matter!
Project compatibility
Hi,
I'm liking the new 'project compatibility' feature in the Our projects area - it's a big step in a very helpful direction. However, I had a couple of concerns about versioning and how this is handled, and just wanted to open it up to a little discussion.
I had the situation today whereby I needed to install the Google Maps datatype package (http://our.umbraco.org/projects/backoffice-extensions/google-maps-datatype) on a 4.6 installation. Now, the package notes from Darren and Lee are typically helpful here because they say explicitly that the latest version of the package (v2) will only work on Umbraco 4.7. For anything older, package v1.2 is recommended. So this gives me my answer - I'll install v1.2 in this project.
However, the official project compatibility area - if I'm understanding it correctly - wasn't much help here because it doesn't seem to take account of the different package versions. What would be great would be to have an instance of the project compatibility table for each version of a package. If this isn't done, then it will also have implications going forward. e.g. Version 3 of the maps package is released and suddenly it doesn't work with Umbraco 4.7 even though 100% of the votes suggest that it's compatible (admittedly over time it would get updated and swing towards a lower compatibility percentage - but that's not particularly useful). Maybe (very likely) I've got this wrong and when a new version of a package is released it'll start the compatibility chart from scratch. Either way though, it'd be handy to keep track of this data for people who are set with a specific version of Umbraco and need to see backwards compatibility.
The HQ have probably got this all in hand, but I just wondered if anyone had investigated it further and could shed any light on this side of things. Like I say, it's already great to have this and I've already been updating the compatibility for the packages I've used in the last few weeks and it's been working very nicely indeed. It would be totally amazing to have full version compatibility - or at least clarity on version compatibility too :)
Okay, so to follow up with my example above, I actually installed v1.2 of the Google Maps package on Umbraco 4.6 and it broke. I uninstalled it and tried v2.0.2 - against the advice of the notes - and that worked perfectly. So, I've now updated the compatability chart to say that this package (version latest?) works with 4.6, but then there's no way to warn others that the older version doesn't work with 4.6. So the compatability chart is missing an important angle as far as I'm concerned.
Databases are another thing which would be really helpful. I know some packages which work with MSSQL but the same package version doesn't work with MySQL or SQLCE, so that would be really good to consider logging too if possible.
Hi Dan
Thanks for the feedback and I'm glad that you are enjoying the new feature. We actually track the votes against the current release of the package but report on overall. I can see your point regarding confussion over which version of the package the version voting applies to and will discuss this further as it would be possible to do what you are saying regarding providing the information on a per version of the package basis.
Regarding the database versions we currently dont track this information so cant report on it unfortunately.
Hello Peter,
I just had this same question/concern about how the "Project Compatibility" feature works, and found this thread wondering if there have been any updates/improvements in this area since it was last mentioned 5 months ago?
In my own humble opinion, Dan is absolutely correct in how misleading it might be to find a package that claims "100% compatiblity" with a given version, only to find out later this was pertaining to an older version of the package--- while the latest version of the package I just downloaded is actually, indeed not compatible!
Thank you for any insight regarding or updates pertaining to this matter!
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