Again With the Dot Release?

Ahh, 3.5.1, we hardly knew ye. It seems that 3.5.1 did not quite get all of the bugs that it should have taken care of. So, we are on to 3.5.2. All of the bugs are issues with iOS 3, so you can skip right over this if you are running iOS 4.

So others can learn from what has, so far, not been one of the smoothest RCLogbook release cycles, here is what happened…

Back when 3.5.0 was being laid down, the feature set was a little more extensive. As a result, I decided that RCLogbook would require iOS 4 at minimum. As a result, there were a few places where I moved from some existing code that worked to new APIs introduced in iOS 4 that were more compact, easier to use, and so on.

As development wore on, some choices were made to drop some of the originally planned features in favor of getting 3.5 out faster. With the pull-in, it was also decided that I would not leave iOS 3 behind quite yet. So, I began to back out some of the iOS 4 specific changes (or, rather, appropriately guard them – originally I had not guarded them since, hey, the app was going to require iOS 4 at minimum so why do a “if iOS 4” song-and-dance).

You can see where this is going. Turns out, I did not get them all in 3.5.0. Turns out I also did not get them all in 3.5.1. While no bugs are ever OK, the transgression in 3.5.0 is a slightly more forgivable – I did get most of guards in place. The transgression in 3.5.1 is a matter of rushing the release out to help out the user base on iOS 3 (of which there are at least a handful of folks who have emailed me with tales of crashes) and not taking the time to make sure I really had all of the guards in place this time. It also did not help that I assumed the bug report was for the crash I was seeing locally (in this case, “add a flight” could mean either with or without the event timer). It turns out that there were three escapes that needed to be fixed and I assumed that the one I fixed was the one the user was seeing, which was not the case.

What I learned:

  • Guard always if there is even a sliver of a chance that you might want to run on an OS that does not support the API.
  • Always ask for clarification on bug reports to make sure you are fixing what is being reported, not a different bug.
  • Stop, take time, and double-check.
This is probably programming 101, but hey, mistakes get made sometimes. And so, 3.5.2 was submitted today. Live and learn.
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