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The Upgrade Thread

... 4.0.4pl1 came out a day or two ago. Seems that 4.0.4 really did (I'm not making this up) cause things not to be found.

Irony. Or ironing. Something like that.

Anyhow, 3.8.6 has also been announced and should be available next week. As per my normal testing, I'll wait for about a week to see if there are problems caused by upgrading to 3.8.6 and/or if there is a real pressing need to do that update (i.e. see what bugs are fixed, see if there are any security holes that are patched, etc.).
 
... and 3.8.6 is now available. No real problems reported, yet. The only problems have been in the form of, "I got my license 356 years ago and when I try to upgrade, it says my license has expired!"
 
I glanced at it and so far it looks like it is stable.
Just because it didn't move doesn't mean it's stable. (I got kids, I got wood block toys, I know what I'm talking about) :)

<sigh> I feel your pain. Personally I'd wait (and carefully collect versions) until it's inevitable...
 
I always try to give it at least a week, unless there's a major security issue.

Along those lines, if you have XP and haven't gotten this month's updates from http://update.microsoft.com, you should.
 
... And, in the "Yeah, it's got great features. It'd be nice if they all worked," category, vBulletin 4.0.5 was released today. I think that's approximately 2 updates a month for this product since it was released. And no, they still haven't fixed the search engine bugs I reported in January.

As far as 3.8.6 goes, I've only seen one real problem posted: it looks like some characters, like the "£" symbol, don't show up properly. One of the vBulletin support staff has recommended a rather easy fix and the person with the problem hasn't responded back yet.

The other problem reported was the "logs me out!" problem that was caused by users upgrading from really old versions of vBulletin: we've already had that problem when we did the 3.8.4pl upgrades, so it's one of those non-issues for us ....

I'll still give it some time. I'm now scheduled to work on Saturdays for the next two months (I need the OT pay, anyhow), so I might do it on a day that I'm "free".
 
Well, they just came out with 3.8.6 PL1. In other words, even though I hadn't seen anyone post any bug reports, there were some.

I'll give it another week before upgrading.
 
"Patch Level." It's been en vogue recently, especially with McAfee products.

I think I explained it this way:

a.b.c.d pl

a = Major release. Significant change in how the program looks and/or works. Example: vBulletin 3 and vBulletin 4.
b = Significant release. Possible major change in how something works or has a new feature or two, but generally not in how something looks. Example: MacOS 10.5 and MacOS 10.6.
c = Minor release. Generally for major bugs, but no new functionality. Example: vBulletin 3.8.5 and vBulletin 3.8.6.
d = Minor bug fix.
pl = "Patch Level" fix. Generally just a security enhancement/fix.

Yes, I know: vBulletin 3.8.6 pl1 is a bugfix (11 bugs, to be precise) release. That's why I said "generally." :p

Now, there can be some other letters/numbers. Gandalfe's favorite would be "SP" or "Service Pack." In other words, when Windows 7 SP1 comes out later this year/beginning of next year, it will be a Service Pack release, rather than Windows 7.1, which it really is because it will have some new features as well as bug fixes.

Additionally, when I did code, I went even more granular: I appended a time stamp. This is rather popular with code collaboration tools, as are "version" stamps, like "this is the 186th build I worked on it today."
 
Now, there can be some other letters/numbers. Gandalfe's favorite would be "SP" or "Service Pack." In other words, when Windows 7 SP1 comes out later this year/beginning of next year, it will be a Service Pack release, rather than Windows 7.1, which it really is because it will have some new features as well as bug fixes.
Thanks Pete, that makes sense. Actually for the product team I work on, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, it's updates.
 
Most useless programming language I learned in college: Modula 3. Yes, it was antiquated by about 30 years when I learned it.
 
Most useless programming language I learned in college: Modula 3. Yes, it was antiquated by about 30 years when I learned it.
I still don't understand why Niklaus Wirth thought it necessary to create a pedantic-mode Pascal instead of extending Pascal into what was more successful under the name of Delphi...
(last time I coded some Delphi applet was yesterday)
 
I still don't understand why Niklaus Wirth thought it necessary to create a pedantic-mode Pascal instead of extending Pascal into what was more successful under the name of Delphi...
(last time I coded some Delphi applet was yesterday)
I just use C#, but that hasn't been in a while. Scripting, that a horse of a different color.
 
I missed two 4.0.x updates that came out in the last couple weeks: 4.0.6, then 4.0.6pl1. The "pl1" release was because two lines of code got mangled in the update and would cause database errors whenever you tried to ... post something.

Ooopsie.

I'm not liking vBulletin's quality control on their 4.x products. I think they hired the guy who sent out that McAfee AntiVirus DAT file that would kill your computer.

================

Anyhow, I've mentioned elsewhere that I'm currently working appx. 50 hours a week and am studying for another computer certification, so I haven't really had too much of a chance to get the 3.8.6pl1 update installed here. I've not gotten any complaints from anyone or problem reports, so I'll just wait out the 3.8.6pl1 update until September, when I should be back to 40 hours a week.

Again, if you see anything that looks really wrong or have any problems, please drop me a line and I'll get it fixed!
 
4.0.7 came out today.

On a related note, I was contacted by a vBulletin developer regarding one of the bugs I reported, which was that vBulletin would get confused and die if more than one person posted at EXACTLY the same time. I reported it in February (checking my previous posts). It only took 'em 7 months to get back to me. And that wasn't incredibly major of a bug. Heck, I can even think of a way to fix it. However, if it takes that long for them to contact someone about a minor bug, I don't have great hopes that the major bug I reported -- the search engine problem -- will be fixed anytime soon.
 
At this point, it looks like there's no reason to move to it until at least 4.1.
4.1 was introduced on November 30. The very next day, a severe bug was discovered and vBulletin pulled the product. On December 2, they came up with a fix. On December 3, they came out with a fix to the fix that they say should work. Seriously. "Should work." Check the link.

[voice="Gladiator"] Are you not entertained?! [/voice]

By the way, they STILL haven't fixed the search engine bugs I reported, oh, 10 months ago.

At this very moment, I see no compelling reason to upgrade to any 4.x version of vBulletin. Well, that's not quite true. There is one: if support for 3.x is discontinued.
 
4.1 was introduced on November 30. The very next day, a severe bug was discovered and vBulletin pulled the product. On December 2, they came up with a fix. On December 3, they came out with a fix to the fix that they say should work. Seriously. "Should work." Check the link.

[voice="Gladiator"] Are you not entertained?! [/voice]

By the way, they STILL haven't fixed the search engine bugs I reported, oh, 10 months ago.

At this very moment, I see no compelling reason to upgrade to any 4.x version of vBulletin. Well, that's not quite true. There is one: if support for 3.x is discontinued.

I feel your pain.

On the other hand - if they ditch support for 3.x in favour of 4.x (which should work), what are you going to lose? If you don't touch it, this old version can't run any worse than a bright shiny new product.

Better stable than leading edge...
 
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