[Gambas-user] Update for Gambas safe now?

[Rolf-Werner Eilert]

Am 19.04.21 um 17:53 schrieb Benoît Minisini:
> Le 19/04/2021 à 17:33, Rolf-Werner Eilert a écrit :
>> On my Ubuntu 18 and 20 systems, an update for Gambas is offered. I 
>> followed the discussion on the new Gambas version here. Can I install 
>> it? Is it safe now? I installed it from gambas-team ppa.
>>
>> The Ubuntu 18 is with Mate, the other one is a Kubuntu 20. Both are 
>> production systems, but the 18 is more important. Breaking Gambas 
>> functionality would mean breaking several essential applications.
>>
>> Regards
>> Rolf
>>
>> ----[ http://gambaswiki.org/wiki/doc/netiquette ]----
> 
> The next one should be safe (it's mainly for running the IDE with 
> GTK+3). I will create it tomorrow if everything is ok.
> 
> Anyway, generally, you should be careful when upgrading a production 
> system with any new version of any language, library or software!
> 
> I try to never do that in my job. :-) Upgrading a dependency is like a 
> new version, so it should be followed by a pre-production server and 
> some tests.
> 
> Regards,
> 

Thank you Benoit for your advice. On the one hand, you are of course 
right here.

On the other hand, I always have two production systems: My PC in the 
office (server with LTSP terminal server system) and my laptop for the 
home office. In every update there are new and fresh features and maybe 
bug corrections which are urgently needed. Some of the updates even 
include security fixes. In the past when upgrading Gambas, I have 
experienced only a few glitches. In general everything continued to work 
fine.

Example: The other day I learned that there is a new editor, and I do 
use the old version in two of my projects. So this will be my next task 
to switch to the new version, so I can leave the old one's component 
away which is now deprecated. But until I find the time to read the 
documentation and understand and implement it, I will have to stick with 
the old one.

When I include Gambas' own stable ppa (gambas-team ppa), apt upgrade 
will automatically offer any update from all ppas included. So I expect 
that when updates are offered, these are stable enough to not break my 
environment and that each and every part and component is included to 
continue running all of my Gambas programs, scripts etc. And I would 
expect the help/Wiki documentation to reflect any "embarrassing" changes.

Some years back, I used to compile each new version for myself, so when 
I read in the list that something was unclear or an update would mean 
including new components with totally different code, I could wait until 
all error reports had ended or until I really had the time to care for 
the coding and do the step. The change in Printer is a good example for 
this. I finally did it when I had to set up a new server anyway.

Regards
Rolf