Should alpah/beta/rc releases note this at runtime?

[Dr. David Kirkby]

I just noticed an old thread, where a user had problems on squite,
making his own version of some packages with an alpha, heta or rc
release of Sage.

It would be good if alpha/beta/rc releases always showed a message that
they were pre-release versions for developers and not considered stable.

If there was some automatic way of making this happen, it would avoid
the risk of someone forgetting to add or delete a file.

Dave

[John H Palmieri]

See < http://trac.sagemath.org/sage_trac/ticket/6505>. How does that
look?

John

[Minh Nguyen]

Here's a thread relevant to the problem you're describing:

http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel/browse_thread/thread/793fe7cf630c8800

The querant was using a pre-release version of Sage 4.1 and had
trouble building sqlite.

--
Regards
Minh Van Nguyen

[Dr. David Kirkby]

Yes, that is the one I see.

A warning such builds could be unstable is useful.

[Dr. David Kirkby]

Personally I would have made the message 'louder' i.e. instead of

Note: this is a prerelease version, and it may be unstable.

I would have used:

WARNING: This is a pre-release version of Sage for developers and is
WARNING: not intended for end users. It may well be unstable.

Dave

[Minh Nguyen]

Argh!!! You're hurting my ears :-)

[John H Palmieri]

Check the new patch.

John

[Dr. David Kirkby]

It's better I feel. It makes the point a bit more.

I don't feel able to review it, as I don't know python much at all, but
hopefully you can find a reviewer. It might save some problems in future.

Dave