Release early, release often is an often heard software developtment philosophy.
Unfortunately the releases of Inkscape are done very irregularly and the time span between two releases is extremely long from ~6 months (0.48.1 > 0.48.2) up to 1.75 years (!) (0.46 > 0.47). And this even for bugfix releases.
For a widely used open source project with an agile contributor team like Inkscape this is really poor. (Sorry for the harsh words.)

As a member of the Firebug Working Group I know what I'm talking about. We're just a handful of active contributors and while major releases still take a bit longer (~6 months), minor releases are done every 1 to 3 months. Major releases are done in more or less equal time spans and we plan to shorten our release cycle to ~4 months for the next major release.

I suggest the Inkscape team should do the same. Users expect to get regular updates and they don't want to wait endlessly for the next version.

Sebastian

This is just a thinly disguised self advert isn't it? No problem.
But if it isn't, you should be aware that this is a user's forum, and while there may be developers who come here often, there are better places to complain to the development team that their coding is just not fast enough. They may have set the bar too low! Perhaps if Inkscape were reimagined as a Firefox addon the user base would grow sufficiently for them to really get cracking or churning out new releases.

Sorry for the very late reply on this. Because I didn't get an email notice, I never realized I got some answers and forgot about the thread again.

v1nce wrote:So you're complaingin that the release rate is increasing

Well, the last release was in 2012, so it's not really increasing at the moment.

druban wrote:This is just a thinly disguised self advert isn't it? No problem.

My post wasn't meant as advertising. Everybody knows Firebug.

druban wrote:But if it isn't, you should be aware that this is a user's forum, and while there may be developers who come here often, there are better places to complain to the development team...

Would the inkscape-user or another mailing list be a better place?

druban wrote:...that their coding is just not fast enough. They may have set the bar too low! Perhaps if Inkscape were reimagined as a Firefox addon the user base would grow sufficiently for them to really get cracking or churning out new releases.

It's not about their coding speed. From what I can see at the Launchpad they are working hard enough. Mozilla also shortened their release cycle of Firefox a while back. Though that doesn't mean that their contributors are coding faster now.
What I meant is that there should be periodical releases within shorter time spans, e.g. every two or three months.

Sebastian

SebastianZ1983 wrote:Would the inkscape-user or another mailing list be a better place?

See "inkscape-devel" on this page: http://inkscape.org/en/community/mailing-lists/ . It's the devs mailing list. Be polite

Or maybe Answers on Launchpad: https://answers.launchpad.net/inkscape. Even though it's more of a user support forum, I have the impression that more devs participate there, than here.

I have the impression (like you, that the coding goes fast, but), it's the packaging of the program for different operating systems that delays new releases. Sorry, I can't remember the correct word for what I'm calling packaging. For example, the last couple of releases have not even included one for Mac. I guess they can't find anyone to do it, for some reason. But in a release a few years ago, Mac came out first and Windows was delayed. And I emphasize my impression, because I don't really know.

Or there's an IRC Channel, here: http://inkscape.org/en/community/discussion/

brynn wrote:

SebastianZ1983 wrote:Would the inkscape-user or another mailing list be a better place?

See "inkscape-devel" on this page: http://inkscape.org/en/community/mailing-lists/ . It's the devs mailing list. Be polite

Ok, posted here:

http://sourceforge.net/p/inkscape/mailm ... /32145816/

Sebastian