Version types

At any given time, there are to be three versions of Spod! on the move. These are Alpha, Beta and Release versions. These are described in more depth below.

Alpha

Alpha versions represent developmental versions of Spod! intended for use by the development team and curious users. Generally speaking they are unstable, but contain more (newer) features than any other version.

Beta

Beta versions are public test versions of Spod! intended for testing new features (a new feature being one that is not currently in full release), before they are added to stable versions. While not as bad as Alphas, Betas may be buggy and unstable to some degree.

Release

Release versions are public releases of Spod! intended for the general consumer to use and enjoy. While nothing in computing is truly bug free, Release versions do not contain 'untested' features (Betas are used for this purpose), and are generally heavily bug-fixed Beta versions.

Version numbers

Each available version of Spod! also bears a number, in the form X.xxY where Y is 'a' or 'b' to represent an Alpha or Beta version (and nothing for a Release version), and X/x represent the actual number. The first version of Spod! was 1.00, and this number is incremented by 0.10 for each feature added, 0.05 for a minor feature, and 0.01 for each bugfix.

Current versions

The table below contains links to all currently available versions of Spod!. Each version is a '.tar.gz' (tarred, gzipped UNIX archive), which contains all the Java 'class' files required to run Spod! - you will still need to obtain a relevant Java Runtime Environment for your system. The 'tested on' column shows those platforms upon which we have received reports of Spod! running successfully; please let us know if you get it to work!

Version	Date of release	Tested on
1.55a	10.3.98	Untested!
1.57b	7.3.98	Linux (Jdk1.1.4)
1.01r	17.2.98	Linux (Jdk1.1.4)