TC 8 still not final but 7.57 as RC?

[Lefteous]

IMHO the reason why there are still so many bugs is that there is still no feature freeze for TC 8. This results in new bugs. A good example is the subfolder placement feature for the directory menu which created quite a few bugs*.

7.57 requires additional integration and release effort which should be used for TC 8 finalization. I think it would be great to focus on TC finalization and then move on.

*Beside that the quality of this feature is dicussible.

[Sir_SiLvA]

STRONGLY AGREED!

[umbra]

I agree with previous comments. Recently there haven't been so many new bugs (many of them are also present in 7.56). And a majority of the current ones is either fixed/easy to fix or not confirmed. I see only two potentially important bugs, but they are extremely hard to reproduce.

Why don't you release RC version of TC8 next week? You can leave those minor fixes or improvements for a maintenance release.

[tbeu]

Yes, very strange release timing indeed. Will there be then a 7.58 containing backported fixes of 8.0 after 7.57 is released?

[sqa_wizard]

Well, IIRC there was a statement, that TC 8 will be just the additional 64-bit port and some bugfixes.
Then there were a lot of posts expecting new features for this major version.
Meanwhile the author is even adding some tiny improvements

I support the upcoming interims 7.57 as a stable version for productive environments.
Nevertheless I work with the 8.x beta versions as I trust them to be stable enough for daily (private) use.

Note: Once the TC 8 is final, there will be no bugfix release on a weekly base anymore ...

As for me: I can live with some beta versions for a while, if there are some more improvements (features and stability), resulting in a rock-stable version as TC used to be!

[Lefteous]

The reason behind my statement above is that I know that many users are waiting for a version that is not focused around new technical bases like Unicode or 64 bit support. Yes I know 7.5 and 8.0 also improved features and invented a few. But that wasn't their main point.
Users are waiting for a version which is centered around adding new features and improving the existing.

[norfie²]

I think it would be great to focus on TC finalization and then move on.

I subscribe to this view too.

[ghisler(Author)]

Unfortunately I cannot say how many months (or years?) the beta test of TC8 will still take. TC 7.56a is from 2010, so it's about time to fix the bugs found since its release. Not all fixes are due to new features - I'm just using the time the beta test takes to add them, otherwise the advance of TC would stall for several months.

For example, these bugfixes have nothing to do with recently added features:
09.02.12 Fixed: Compare by content, files > 1MB: Open file with "deny write" option to avoid problem with file mapping (32/64)
08.02.12 Fixed: Prevent floating point exception (without using try..catch) in date/time compare function in case of invalid timestamps from some network drives (32/64)
08.02.12 Fixed: Delete empty lines at the end of a tooltip (32/64)
08.02.12 Fixed: Small error in word wrap function used in tooltips causing word wraps at unwanted locations (32/64)
07.02.12 Fixed: Memory leak when searching with regular expressions (32/64)
05.02.12 Fixed: Do not follow links when searching, copying etc. if the target cannot be determined due to missing user rights (32/64)
05.02.12 Fixed: Could not unpack from header-encrypted RAR when using wildcards other than *.* (32/64)
05.02.12 Fixed: Increased default width of multi-rename tool a bit (32/64)
05.02.12 Fixed: Moving cursor over main menu item while TC was in background -> other menu items would disappear (64)

[franc]

I update the 8 beta every one or two weeks, never having any bugs despite using totalcmd all the time.

As I like totalcmd very much, I agree to be beta tester even for months and another 20 betas

[ghisler(Author)]

Well, I hope that there will not be 20 more betas, but who knows. That's why I will bring out TC 7.57 now - for all those who do not want to use any beta versions.

[wenntel]

let's not forget the main point that was made:

IMHO the reason why there are still so many bugs is that there is still no feature freeze for TC 8. This results in new bugs.

[Lefteous]

Great to see that beta 20 contains only bug fixes.

[ghisler(Author)]

As I described above, most of the bug fixes in Beta 19 did not fix bug of features which were added just recently. Therefore adding new features to beta versions is not responsible for the long beta test...

[Samuel]

But on the other hand most of the bugs are also present in the 7.5x versions... (beside the small cosmetic bugs of the 64-bit version)