Launchpad itself

trunk is always listed at the top of the downloads for a project

Bug #405597 reported by Michael Rooney
18
This bug affects 3 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Do
Invalid
Undecided
Unassigned
Launchpad itself
Triaged
Low
Unassigned
wxBanker
Fix Released
Medium
Unassigned

Bug Description

Any releases from trunk are listed at the top of the downloads page for a project, even if there are newer series and releases. This can be incredibly unfortunate as people are very likely to download the old release trunk instead of the newer versions.

I couldn't figure out why people kept downloading my old versions and not the new ones, until I viewed the general "Downloads" page and realized it was at the top. This happened because I started out releasing from trunk in my naive project management ways, then starting branching and releasing from branches. However all these new series were listed below my releases from trunk.

My only solution was to delete all the release files from trunk which was sad as that was neat for historical reasons.

Unfortunately I am not sure what the best solution is. Perhaps series should be ordered based on their most recent release, or the order should be editable.

See original description
Michael Rooney (mrooney)
description: updated
Ursula Junque (ursinha)
affects: launchpad → launchpad-registry
Revision history for this message
Curtis Hovey (sinzui) wrote :

This is a bit tricky. The inverted sorting work well for planned releases (fro other series). Trunk has always been problematic. We'll need to think if there is a no-sorting way to demphasise trunk.

Changed in launchpad-registry:
importance: Undecided → Low
status: New → Triaged
Revision history for this message
Michael Rooney (mrooney) wrote : Re: [Bug 405597] Re: trunk is always listed at the top of the downloads for a project

Yeah, I think the problematic case is bound to be somewhat common
though, where a project starts out with a first release or two from
trunk and then starts taking advantage of more advanced project
management concepts like series. If you don't do this for the very
first release, you are stuck with your first release at the top
forever unless you delete it (and notice it first).

Combined with the fact that it is truly non-obvious that this is
happening unless you try to see how users download your own software,
it is kind of nasty. As such I think doing something better is
moderately important. I just clicked a few of the "Featured" projects
on the Launchpad home page and found that one of them is also
affected, GNOME Do. So, it's not just me :)

Revision history for this message
Michael Rooney (mrooney) wrote :

I've added a task for my project as well as for Do, to raise their awareness that 0.8.2 is very near the bottom while 0.8.0 is at the top and still getting daily downloads.

Revision history for this message
Mark Campbell (mark.campbell) wrote :

How about huge red type that says "The latest version is [insert version]!!!!!!!"

Revision history for this message
Michael Rooney (mrooney) wrote :

I don't know about that :) But what about having a smaller section at
the top showing the most recent release for say, the three most recent
series(es) by date? Perhaps a bullet point list that says something
like "Recent series updates: 1.2 => 1.2.3, 2.0 => 2.0b2, 1.0 =>
1.0.1". If these were bullets I think it would be easy to see that
both a 1.2.3 release and 2.0b2 were recently released and decide which
one you want. Then perhaps have the normal flow as "All series
downloads" below. Any thoughts?

Or, why not use more information if you have it? If a series is marked
as the status "Current Stable Release", have a link at the top for
that? Stickies for "Current Stable Release" and "Supported" make sense
to me.

Robert Dyer (psybers)
Changed in do:
status: New → Invalid
Revision history for this message
Michael Rooney (mrooney) wrote :

I worked around this by deleting all trunk downloads.

Changed in wxbanker:
importance: Undecided → Medium
status: New → Fix Released
Curtis Hovey (sinzui)
tags: added: releases
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