by david » Mon Oct 14, 2013 4:55 pm
You may want to stick with 6.1.6 unless you are prepared to...
A little story about how we spent a year going from 6.1 betas to finally 6.1.6. Early on each point release fixed some things and broke some things. At about 6.1.3 we started getting private "RC" builds before point releases were shipped. Sometimes there were up to 4-5 RC builds for a point release. Each one of these fixed some things and broke some things.
We maintained two servers to compare new builds against old. We also kept Servoy install snapshots for each RC of each point release. We even set up our test servers so you could easily spin up a different release. We filed bug reports with detailed descriptions and sample solutions. If we caught an issue later down the line, we could (and did) go back and pinpoint which point and RC release the issue popped up in.
Against all this we had a fairly comprehensive testing process. We focused on UI and speed because these seemed to have the most variableness with regards to web client. We went from solution model being mostly unusable, network chatter out the wazzoo, CSS design incomplete, anchoring all over the place, various widgets issues, etc — to 6.1.6 which is a very solid release.
Along the way we figured out web client best practices, what to avoid, and how to seriously hack web client. It wasn't uncommon for other developers to wait to upgrade until they had seen the results of our testing.
Web client isn't the focus of 7.x so we're not moving up. (More likely they will break more than they will fix is our thinking.) Yes I miss not having constructors and yes I drool over the upcoming form folders and yes I'd like to being able to use Git without hard-linking directories...but it sure is nice taking a break from what seemed like non-stop Servoy testing.
Moral of the story: you will get stuck—over and over—and not just simple-stuck. You either need your own comprehensive testing process or you need to piggy-back off someone else's. And looking around, I don't think anyone (including Servoy) has this thorough of a process in place for testing 7.x builds (RCs are public now) from a web client perspective. Or at least they are not being vocal about it like we were.
So in my opinion, waiting for 7.x to mature would be a good choice if web client is your focus. 6.1.6 is just one of those rare "really solid" Servoy releases.
David Workman,
KabootitEverything you need to build great apps with Servoy