First Time Releases
With derivative packages, we currently build first time releases so that all Delta files are empty, and Snapshot and Full files contain identical content, which comprises of all of the new content. This is opposed to the normal situation where the Full file contains all content, the Snapshot only the most recent statuses, and the Delta file only the new content.
However, there is a school of thought that suggests that the Delta files in these first time releases should also be populated with the new content (and therefore be identical to Full and Snapshot files, just for these first time releases). This is both to enable easy implementation of the first time packages, but also because some people consider Delta's to be between the current state and the previous state (in this case no content), rather than between 2 releases (which results in a blank Delta because there is no previous release.
Thoughts and opinions welcome as always please!
Thanks
Andrew
Comments
I have the same opinion as Dion.
I'm in the same boat. And an empty delta for a first release would just seem odd....
I've always thought that the first release of a module should show the same set of rows for that module in the Full, Snapshot and Delta (note that there may be other rows from other modules). The Delta being empty never made much sense to me, because clearly the newly added rows from that first release are the delta since the last release (which contained nothing).