How to run previous releases of Mathesar

[Sean Colsen]

Brent/Kriti/Pavish (and anyone else who might be able to help),

I’d like to be able to run previous versions of Mathesar side-by-side with a current version, and I want some help from you to find a good solution for this.

For the pre-release QA work it’s especially relevant because I’d like us to check any bugs we find against v0.1.3 to see if they’re regressions. Thus far I’ve been using the demo site for this checking. This is how I was able to make the comparison screenshots in #3395 and also determine that #3397 is not a regression. Using the demo site works okay, but an example of where it breaks down is #3400, where the reproduction steps require psql. I've had other needs like this in the past from time to time and I'd be curious to find a good workflow for it.

Some ideas:

• Find a good way to run multiple Mathesar versions on my local machine concurrently.
• We host a private Mathesar installation running on the previous version, and we have access to pqsl there.

Brent/Kriti/Pavish I’d like to hear what you think is the path of least resistance here.

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[Kriti Godey]

Is this still something we need to address, or does Brent's plan to set up infrastructure (discussed at today's release meeting) cover this?

I think having previous versions running on a hosted private installation makes the most sense, but I'll defer to Brent.

[Kriti Godey]

Following up on this.

[Sean Colsen]

After 0.1.4, I think our unified Docker image will actually be a great way for us to run the most recent release locally. I can spin it up and give the container a special name like "mathesar_0_1_4". Then I can destroy it when I'm done. With this method I don't think we need any extra infra.

[Kriti Godey]

Okay great, thanks!