[xim]

Mike, I remember our dialog in June. Steve, we have taken into consideration your ideas. Here are some facts and planned improvements, guys:

1) You are right. We used to release new versions too often. We had to do it because we got feedback and requests from our existing merchants who had to be provided with solutions for real cases. We just could not tell them “Please wait for six months, guys”. There have always been two sides: developers and merchants. We have to help merchants in the first place.


2) After version 5.2.6 X-Cart became much more powerful and stable, so we were able to change the release procedure. There was only one major update since IRCE 2015 - 5.2.7. The July 5.2.6 release includes bug fixes and improvements of back-end payments and image settings only, no more major changes. The versions 5.2.8-5.2.10 include only bug fixes.


3) We are aiming to offer a schedule of one release per 6-12 months in the future, but at the moment we have to schedule one major update in 3-4 months.


4) In 5.3 we will implement the 4th digit to the core version to distribute bug fixes only. So, an increment from 5.3.0.x to 5.3.1.0 in the version number will mean that the release is a feature update, and an increment from 5.3.1.0 to 5.3.1.1 will mean that it is a bugfix update.