[Bug 744918] Update Help Manual for Mike Alexanders mods to Advanced Portfolio Rpt

[John Ralls]

> On Mar 21, 2015, at 3:57 PM, Geert Janssens <geert.gnucash at kobaltwit.be> wrote:
> 
>> Stable releases have an odd version number. E.g. 2.4, 2.6, 2.8…
>> 
>> Unstable releases have an even version number E.g. 2.5, 2.7, 2.9… and
>> are only intended for developers working on longer term
>> modifications.
>> 
> Ehm, 2.4 and 2.6,... are *even* minor version numbers, while 2.5, 2.7,... are *odd* as far as my 
> knowledge of English goes...
> 
> And it's not quite so that unstable releases are intended for developers only. Quite on the 
> contrary. Unstable releases are intended for testers (which can be developers, but are usually 
> interested community members that don't have the time/skills to build gnucash from scratch). 
> They are meant to expose the developers' work to a wider audience so the can test and report 
> bugs against the major changes developers have been working on. These come late in a major 
> development cycle and are intended to stabilize the work so far for the next big release. So by 
> the time unstable releases are issued, relevant longer term modifications should be nearly done 
> (except for some bugfixing).
> 

You remember correctly that in English "even" numbers are multiples of two.

I'd like to add that the unstable release series using odd second numbers are very short-lived, normally only six months or so, with new releases every month and a final pre-stable release two weeks before the stable release; if a significant problem surfaces in that last release we'll focus on that problem and do another pre-stable with the stable to follow two weeks later.

That doesn't belong on Release Schedule, which is just the plan. It doesn't really belong in Release Process either, because that's a checklist for the release manager (currently me) to make sure that he remembers all of the tasks that need to be done when we do a stable release. It surely belongs somewhere though, maybe Development Process?

Regards,
John Ralls