Maintenance release uploaded
December 7th, 2005I’ve uploaded a maintenance release of dbdesc to fix a couple of bugs:
- SQL Server: Columns of type sysname are not documented
- SQL Server 2000: Triggers are not shown in XSL templates
I’ve detected some minor bugs more since version 1.2, but they can wait until the next point release, which will be released soon.
However the bug related with triggers should have been fixed as soon as it was detected. Answering the four Eric Sink’s questions to know if a bug should be fixed…
Q1. When this bug happens, how bad is the impact (severity)?
Well, the program doesn’t crash, but it is not doing everything it is supposed to do.
Q2. How often this bug happen (frequency)?
Always with SQL Server 2000 databases, so I guess most of the users are affected
Q3. How much effort would be required to fix this bug (cost)?
Small, the bug is already fixed, it only needs to be packed in a new version.
Q4. What is the risk of fixing this bug (risk)?
Very low.
So, it’s clear that an update release was needed. The problem was that I did not even ask to myself those questions. I’ve just fixed and committed the change to my source code repository together with other changes related with the next version of dbdesc that I was working on and I forget about it until today, when someone who was trying dbdesc reported it to me! 
December 7th, 2005 at 6:47 pm
The problem was that I did not even ask to myself those questions. I’ve just fixed and committed the change to my source code repository together with other changes related with the next version of dbdesc that I was working on and I forget about it until today, when someone who was trying dbdesc reported it to me!
That’s why you use branches in your VCS to maintain updates. You simply must ensure that any update to a released version is done off the branch of that version. So that if you released version 1.0, create a branch for it and when it’s time to release 1.1 you know it was done off the 1.0 branch and doesn’t contain the shiny features intended for version 2.0.
December 8th, 2005 at 4:34 am
Yes you are right. I created a new branch in version 1.2 but I simply didn’t commit those bug fixes to that branch. At least I included the bug in the bug tracking database so it was easy to find and fix.
Anyway, the next version is almost ready so…