Support different release channels [released, beta, alpha]

[denelon]

I'd like to be able to use the package manager for different channels of software. This could be beta, or unstable branches, or other kinds of constructs.

Semantic versioning (https://semver.org) has a specification we may follow for pre-release software.
Microsoft has channels.
Many open source projects have branches.

Note: Some packages support "side by side" install where a stable and a pre-release version may both be on a system at the same time. These are not considered release channels in the Windows Package Manager, but they are treated as different packages. Release channels are considered in the context of the Windows Package Manager for packages that do not support "side by side" installation.

[denelon]

If this is a feature you'd like to see supported and you have an example of how the software is published, please share this to help us gather data on the best way to proceed.

[utybo]

Java (AdoptOpenJdk) is a good example for this. There are two LTS releases at the moment (versions 8 and 11) and the current release is 14. This feature would be useful for having at least the option to install version 8 or 11.

It might also be possible to just have different packages (e.g. openjdk8 and openjdk11, that's what Ubuntu is using I believe) but that feels less clean.

Also, all Java versions can be installed side-by-side, so winget should probably support having e.g. versions 8 and 11 installed at the same time. (they're in separate directories when installed manually)

[ocdtrekkie]

The ideal scenario (which is familiar to Linux folks, I believe), is that openjdk or openjdk-latest should install the newest supported release, and openjdk-8 or openjdk-11 or the like should be maintained packages respectively, so that people can script opening the release version they need.

The best solution, I think, is to require major version numbers for packages with multiple supported releases, and then winget needs to support "shortcuts", such that running winget install openjdk is understood to install openjdk-14. And when a newer OpenJDK package comes out, that shortcut can be pointed to the newer release, without breaking users who are explicitly trying to install openjdk-14.

[cnshenj]

Chocolatey: --version
NuGet: -Version
Docker: name:tag
npm: name@tag

Personally I like the npm format.

[rashil2000]

Another example of this would be the Node.js package. Many times the recommended version is nodejs-lts, but when installing Node through winget, it installs the current (latest) release, which is not very widely supported. The same is the case with .Net Core. The default installation version should be the Long Term Support version, or we should have some way of specifying it, instead of manually feeding the version numbers every time.

[KorbenDev]

I want to support this. Today my script tried to download and install a 7Zip alpha(!) version. First I want to question the need to distribute alpha/beta versions over package management in general. I don't think that's a good idea.
And if you really want to make alpha/beta state applications available, they should be tagged very clearly!
That leads back to my request of using semantic versioning. The version of the 7Zip package is 20.0.0-alpha. WTF??? Do I really have to check for "alpha", "beta", "test" and all the other naming someone could think of, probably also in different languages, to avoid not released software?
Sorry, but for me personal this issue is just getting annoying.

[ocdtrekkie]

KorbenDev mildly horrifying.

Kevin Larkin (MS) (@KevinLaMS) it looks like you did the manual approval steps on microsoft/winget-pkgs#2088 ...what happened here? Has the Package Manager team defined any sort of policy or procedure regarding release channels and the stability of versions that should be accepted into winget?

[tusharb86]

Pinging Kevin Larkin (MS) (@KevinLaMS) and Demitrius Nelon (@denelon) for an update here. I went to install 7zip and found that it would be an alpha version (20.0.0-alpha). This is not something I want to install on my development machine and expected that I would be installing the latest stable release of 7zip (19.00)... Can we please revert microsoft/winget-pkgs#2088?

[ocdtrekkie]

This is probably why Keivan Beigi (@kayone) shouldn't have given up just because Microsoft entered the space. Months later, Microsoft appears to be unable to decide how to handle this, when handling decisionmaking on what releases to push is fundamental to operating a good package manager.