What the &@!* is going on with the Upgrades?

General Discussions
1

For years I’ve remained a silent Plex Pass consumer. There isn’t an auto-update for my isolated and secured Windows Service custom install; so, I manually have to upgrade PMS whenever I get around to it.

But the last few days has been insane guys.

Nevermind the absolute sparse and non-descriptive Release notes. How many different ways can we read “(Transcoder) Updated transcoder” to figure out what changed?

In the last two days, I have upgraded to:

1.4.4 (previous version was 1.4.3 as of Saturday before I started)
1.5.5 (last update I had in my /updates folder)
1.6.1 (what, the latest wasn’t downloaded? ok, manually download and install? humm, it’s changing my databases?!? that wasn’t in the release notes)
1.7.0 (4am movie crunch of Prometheus before theater time of latest movie. What, another 1.7.0 update? Come on!)
1.7.1 (lunch break, let’s check the logs after the kiddo has been streaming. WHAT?!?! ANOTHER UPDATE?)

Is the “Plex Pass” early access to releases really just a beta testing channel?

So yes, I am calling out the Plex release cycle and questioning its stability and release processes.

If this does get raised to the top, going forward we would expect some changes:

  • More descriptive release notes. Like, exactly what was updated, why, and how.
  • What is being upgraded - is it one way? For example, installation of 1.6.1 forced a “Upgrading database” prompt. Does that mean it is no longer backwards compatible if I decide to go back to 1.5.5? Likewise, the 1.7.0 jump - can we go back to 1.6.1? Where was that information in the release notes?
  • For bugs, it would be nice to note how long they have been known. Maybe link to the original thread or Issue tracking of the original reporter, so we know it was fixed and when and for what version.
  • Finally, for new features linking to the Feature Request and/or RFP to explain why and how would go a long ways to figuring out rational.

Also, what’s the version naming convention here? If it is anything like http://semver.org/, then jumping Minor changes within a few days is just insane. What is this big new feature that required a breaking change (hence, the Minor update)? What is the breaking changes before we decide to upgrade?

I usually pop in to upgrade my server every 6 months or so. But these last couple of days has just been irritating for someone following proper security practices and isolating PMS from the rest of the system (dedicated “no access” user, restricted permissions to file system and system resources, no local login, etc - very standard security practices on Windows production environments and in most of my Linux boxes as well).

2

1.4.3 - released 3/2
1.4.4 - 3/15
1.5.5 - 4/13
1.6.1 - 4/26
1.7.0 - 5/22
1.7.1 - 5/23

I’m not sure how you are getting the updates, but the release schedule is scattered. If you wait a long time between manually updating your server then it is possible that things get backed up. You can always get the latest version from https://www.plex.tv/downloads/. Yes, the Plex Pass release is sort of a Beta in that it gives you access to Beta features that are not in the public releases. You are not required to use the Plex Pass version is you do not wish to try out these Beta features.

3

I had run the update on my linux box and sadly my install is now dead. I spun up a new vm and installed plex but my main media server is in huge trouble. I am starting to look at alternatives to plex. I checked to see if plex was running as a service and it is. When I attempt to the server via http nothing. Terrible job guys! :frowning:

4

@dameit34 said:
I had run the update on my linux box and sadly my install is now dead. I spun up a new vm and installed plex but my main media server is in huge trouble. I am starting to look at alternatives to plex. I checked to see if plex was running as a service and it is. When I attempt to the server via http nothing. Terrible job guys! :frowning:

If you would like some help diagnosing the issue you’re having you are welcome to start a new thread to have the problem looked at

5

I don’t feel there is too many updates at all. If you want to stay isolated and update the server every 6 months then stick to the public releases and update every 6 months.

Nothing is forcing you to upgrade just because​the update came out. I also can’t imagine a manual upgrading taking more than a handful of minutes either. Cost/benefit comes into play.

6

I signed up for Plex Pass because of the increased updates – buggy or not, they do give you a glimpse as to what is being worked on (and I would love to see more bugs being squashed rather than just pushing out new features, hint: plugins not being able to write to the original title field).

7

Whilst I don’t think there are too many updates… I think the OP has a point. What justified the jump to 1.7.0? etc etc. Lore details and links to bugs solved etc would be trivial to implement and provide a lot more information to Plex Pass users…

8

Plex’s uses their own numbering system. Moaning about it is a waste of your own time.

9

I’m just thankful that they are regularly updating Plex. Most updates seem to fix issues and/or add new features. It’s a good thing.

10

Don’t get me wrong - it is a good thing. And I can get over the numbering even if it is quirky. However it wouldn’t hinder the Plex team at all to add a little more meat to the bones of what they are updating/fixing… might as well display the hard work they’ve done…

11

I do appreciate the more frequent updates being a Plex Pass member but I do agree with the OP that there is not enough info in the release notes.

Another example of this is between PMS releases 1.4.4 thru 1.5.4 (possibly 1.6.0 too) there were many issues related to DVR EPGs not updating. The release notes between these releases as it related to the DVR were few and minor. However, many users had issues with the EPG data all of a sudden.
There was very little information given other than some vague messages that it seemed some things may have changed on the back end and the fix was update, update, update (through the various PMS releases), refresh the EPG and when that didn’t work, reboot your PMS server and manually refresh the EPG again (and sometimes a second time). Then it finally seemed to work.
Because of these issues (starting even before the example above) I typically do not update to a new PMS release unless there is a specific fix I’m looking for or some newly added functionality I’m wanting to try out.

12

@George51 said:
Whilst I don’t think there are too many updates… I think the OP has a point. What justified the jump to 1.7.0? etc etc. Lore details and links to bugs solved etc would be trivial to implement and provide a lot more information to Plex Pass users…

Sometimes the numbering system to end users may not make sense, but it probably does internally. Typically when you see a major jump it’s because a core part of the code has changed or something has been added in some way. Minor numbers are generally fixes.

Now you may not see a “major” change right away (e.g. feature turned on) but others may who are part of testing. But anyway you slice it you generally know something has changed by the version bump. So if you wait a couple of release and then look back at the release history it can make sense (hind site).

This isn’t Plex specific but the way many companies to release numbering. Nothing secret going on.