Biicode version tags - overwriting versions while publishing

Question

I have been publishing on biicode, using only the DEV and STABLE tags so far. Unless I have misunderstood, for a given block, it seems that I can publish a DEV version as many times as I like, and my previously published code will get overwritten by the new version each time. On the contrary, it seems that I can only publish a STABLE version once and I cannot overwrite the code published under that tag.

I was wondering how the other tags behave. Can ALPHA and BETA versions be overwritten or can I only publish under those tags just once as well?

Thanks!

Dimitri

Answer 1

All versions, but DEV one, are inmmutable, they are freezed after publication. The aim is to achieve full reproducibility. Changing their contents, or their tags would change what consumers of that code are effectively using. For the same reason, DEV versions, that can be overwritten, cannot be tagged.

So yes, ALPHA and BETA behave exactly the same as STABLE. Their name is just an indication for the target public The idea when you publish an ALPHA version is that you want your teams and collaborators to test it. I would tag them for example as @1.2test1, @1.2test2 and so on. BETA versions are for community testing, probable tags could be release candidates @1.2rc3, and STABLE versions are for production, you could tag them as @1.2 (and probably generate minors with @1.2.1

Note: The @ is not necessary in the command, I think the actual command is

$ bii publish user/block --tag=BETA --versiontag=1.2rc3

While you can explicit it in your config file as:

user/block @1.2rc3

That should lookup it, and add also the publication index, something like:

user/block: 3 @1.2rc3