suggest re release of betas

[ATI user]

I assume there is a lot involved in releasing a beta...mainly trying to solve as many issues as possible?

unfortunately, the greater the delay of each release, the less efficient the beta testing becomes

for instance, I find a bug in beta 5....Josh starts working on it....can not reproduce...we go back and forth several times....still can not reproduce....I now have to write code to send in to reproduce....he still can not reproduce....reason being he is using the latest code and I am using beta 5....issue was already fixed indirectly...total waste of his time and mine that could have been avoided if code was released more frequently

hence there is a diminishing return on effort the longer the delay....plus users are experiencing the same bugs for an extended period of time.....which is increasingly annoying and less productive ....for example, I had to restart NT 100 times yesterday to run replays as OIF only works once..i.e. has to be reset with restart...this is a further waste of my time

my suggestion is that betas are released frequently (every Friday) to move the testing forward at a faster pace.....why wait for 120 bugs to be killed?.....I would be happier to be on beta 15 now instead of 5 as all the old bugs I have to work around are still there

just a thought

[NinjaTrader_Ray]

Thanks for your thoughts... We would love to release as soon as possible and agree with you the sooner the better. We do release them when it is commercially reasonable to do so.

[NinjaTrader_JoshP]

ATI user,

Just to clarify, only this past week has testing been done on latest sources as I do not have access to a computer with vanilla B5 since I am working remotely. Standard procedure involves direct apples to apples comparison.

Also, B6 should be out today. Thank you for your time and efforts in testing. We do appreciate it.

[ATI user]

ok....in that case ....sounds good

yahooooo beta 6

will check all 5 bugs for fix

[ATI user]

Thanks for your thoughts... We would love to release as soon as possible and agree with you the sooner the better. We do release them when it is commercially reasonable to do so.

Ray

Please explain 'commercially reasonable'. Is it cost related?..software development related?..image related?

In my view beta 11 needs to be released now...or beta 10 re-released now....not soon....for the following reasons.

For my purposes, and because I do a LOT of testing, beta 10 is the worst NT7 beta so far.

Strategy Analyzer runs fine however is basically useless to me for two reasons:
1. it only runs on closed bars
2. it does not run atmStrategy code

So, to get accurate test results, I must use Market Replay....which is an excellent test bed ...when it is working.

With beta 10 MR crashes constantly unless you close all charts before:
1. connecting to MR
2. when switching in MR from one date to another...e.g. running Thursday data then using GoTo Tuesday in the same week....
3. switching from live feed to MR

This means to use MR you must close and recreate your charts constantly...unless you only use one date. MR will back up in the same day without crashing...but not switch dates or connect without crashing. This really stinks. Some days I have 30-40 or more crashes using MR.

I have been trading my cash account live with betas 1 thru 10. No worries there. MR is the next biggest feature in NT in my opinion and must be important to most of your 1000+ beta testers. Would it therefore not be 'commercially prudent' to release a fix for this issue now?

I expect most beta testers are like me...i.e. now only using NT7 betas to trade as their new code uses all the new features. Therefore please consider that saying we should "expect bugs in betas" is not much help if the bugs last too long...i.e. we are trying to make money with it...not just testing it and writing cool new code...and therefore we need fixes to serious bugs much faster than minor bugs. This MR issue is a serious bug.

Other than the above, personally I think NT7 is excellent and a huge leap forward from 6.5. Thanks.

[NinjaTrader_JoshP]

ATI user,

We release new betas when we are able to iron out critical bugs. Market Replay is not the only bug around. It is extremely inefficient for us to be constantly releasing solutions and then sifting through reports every day saying more or less the same thing that we already are aware. This would cause us to spend all our time explaining instead of fixing. Thank you for understanding.

[ATI user]

Josh

This is true if you call it beta 11 because ever user would think all bugs in 10 are fixed.

If you re-released 10 to solve the critical bugs then no one would expect all bugs to be fixed? Therefore no re-reporting of known bugs? This would make it easier to use the current beta without changing user expectations?

[NinjaTrader_JoshP]

Thank you for the suggestion, but releasing a hotfix for only this is not possible at this point in time.

[ATI user]

OK ...thanks anyway

[jdfagan]

I realize you guys don't want an official bug database/list so you can have users report multiple threads reporting same/similar issues from their perspective - which I can respect.

However, it would be really nice when you do release new beta versions to describe what you have done since last beta - i.e., which bugs you have fixed (or believe you have fixed) and which features (if any) have been added and/or changed and/or removed.

Keep up the good work.

Regards,

JD

[NinjaTrader_Dierk]

I realize you guys don't want an official bug database/list so you can have users report multiple threads reporting same/similar issues from their perspective - which I can respect.

However, it would be really nice when you do release new beta versions to describe what you have done since last beta - i.e., which bugs you have fixed (or believe you have fixed) and which features (if any) have been added and/or changed and/or removed.

Keep up the good work.

Regards,

JD

I believe what you're looking for is the release notes section in the help guide which we have since NT6 (if I recalled correctly).

[jdfagan]

Thanks Dierk. I didn't realize the release notes for the betas were there.

I was inadvertently looking for some kind of reference to these notes in the "NinjaTrader Version 7 Beta X Available - For your use only" emails we get when new betas are released.