Cincom Smalltalk Release Cycles: Fall Release and Future Releases

The Cincom Smalltalk group is always looking for ways to improve our products.  This includes adding new features, refining and improving existing features and trimming out unused features of the product.

But we also examine and improve other related areas, such as our engineering process and release cycles.  Based on feedback we received from listening to and talking to our customers, we have made some changes to our release cycle.

Customers requested a true maintenance release that represented refinements and fixes to the major release and did not include significant new features and functionality, which could represent more work for porting and production application certification.

Additionally, we wanted to modernize and improve the delivery of fixes and refinements in between major releases, more similar to how most major software products provide updates.

We heard our customers.  This fall you will see service-pack maintenance releases for our Cincom Smalltalk products.  This release is a true maintenance update as requested by Cincom Smalltalk customers.

In future release cycles, we plan to have one major release annually along with service-pack online releases at regular intervals.  The service-pack releases will have refinements, fixes and updates to the major releases.

The Cincom Smalltalk group (including engineering, support, marketing and product management) is always looking for better ways to serve our customers’ needs.  If you have ideas for new features, fixes, refinements or any suggestions for Cincom Smalltalk products, we want to hear them.  Send your feedback and suggestions to athomas@cincom.com.

Thanks and good Smalltalking to you!

Regards

Arden Thomas
Cincom Smalltalk Product Manager
athomas@cincom.com