As of mid-April, 2008, we are officially putting A-Shell 5.0 on the shelf and saying, "It's done."

In conjunction with that, of course, is the announcement that A-Shell 5.1 is now available--as it has been, quietly, for several weeks.

If you are a part of the A-Shell development community, you know that A-Shell evolves more along the lines of a "continuous release" than a series of dramatic steps. Changes, additions, fixes, etc., that are implemented occur on Monday morning are usually available for distribution on Monday afternoon.

This is great for developers working on the bleeding edge, but less good for end-users and other environments where stability is more valued than the latest features. It is therefore necessary for us to periodically declare, "Here is a stable release." So that's what we're doing now with A-Shell 5.0.

5.0 now becomes the stable or "retail" release of A-Shell, 5.1 becomes the "developer" release and will have all the latest changes. This complies with our previously-established numbering system of using even numbers for stable releases and odd numbers for developer releases.

When you (developer) wish to install A-Shell for a new customer, or if you (end-user) wish to update to the latest stable version of A-Shell, you should go to the "Downloads" page on our website and download the 5.0 version of A-Shell for your platform (Windows, Linux, etc.). If there is a patch/update file available, it will be listed and available on that same page. We expect that these files will change very little from this point foward.

A-Shell 5.1, now the "developer" release, will be available from the usual directory-tree structure at dist/51dev/. As should be clear from these notes, A-Shell 5.1 is intended only for the use of developers and programmer/developer-type end-users.

Points to Consider

Evolutionary nature of the release: As suggested above, A-Shell 5.1 is not being released because of any major new feature or revolutionary development(other than APEX), but rather because the demand among developers to take advantage of the accumulated minor enhancements (that have been going into it, rather than 5.0, over the last several weeks or months), now justifies making it available in a slightly more official manner.

Mutiple simultaneous instances: It has always been (and continues to be) possible to simultaneously run multiple versions and/or multiple copies of A-Shell; simply launch them from different directories and they will stay separate. (You can choose to share some or all of the disks and ppns between multiple versions, including between 5.0 and 5.1, by editing the DEVICE definitions in the respective miame.ini files.) That was not previously the case with ATE, which always used the most recently registered copy of ASHW32, regardless of which version of ATE was launched, or from where. As a convenience for side-by-side testing of ATE, a single 5.0 version and a single 5.1 version of it can now be run simultaneously without conflict between the two.

Should I be worried about bugs/problems in 5.1? There are no known issues in 5.1. However, it is new, so caution should be as exercised if/when installing 5.1 in production environments.

The GDI printing feature of A-Shell has had some major work done on it. There have been no intentional changes, so everything should work the same as it has in the past. The new code has been reasonably tested. But if you use complex GDI commands or depend heavily on GDI reports, you may want to do some specific testing in this area.

Should I distribute 5.1 to my customers? As far as the developers of A-Shell are aware, there are no reasons for you not to do so. On the other hand, it is a new and rapidly changing release, so normal precautions apply. We strongly recommend that you take advantage of the ability to run multiple simultaneous instances of different versions for testing before converting any important production systems. Also, be advised that we may, from time to time, take advantage of the fact that since 5.1 is a "development" version, the importance of maintaining backwards compatibility for recently added features may sometimes be subjugated to the demand for enhancements.

Noteworthy New Features:

• A-Shell/Windows and ATE now include print preview and export functions collectively known as "APEX;" see the page of that name for more information.
   
• A Regular Expression capability has been introduced and is starting to be incorporated in various forms as seem appropriate. As of this writing, that includes a subroutine (REGEX), a BASIC function, and INFLD.SBR. See the A-Shell 5.1 development notes for more information which, as usual, are available in both text and Help (.chm) versions.
   
• Ability to print (with preview) XTREE data (via new Debug dialog option or new XTREE opcode)

I have questions! I need more information! As always, refer to the A-Shell Forum for in-depth discussions on all aspects of A-Shell and related matters.