Release management

Important

You can edit releases even if the category is unpublished.

To manage the releases in ARS, just click on the Releases button on the Control Panel page, or the Releases link right below the component's name in any ARS page. A standard Joomla! administrator list page appears.

The search box will filter categories based on their title or description. If you know the numeric ID of a release you can find it quickly by searching for id:1234 where 1234 is the numeric release ID. Search is against partial text, i.e. 1.2.3 will match both 1.2.3 and 1.2.3.b1. If you want to search by a specific version number (exact match) use version:1.2.3 where 1.2.3 is the exact version number you are looking for.

You can quickly make a copy or change the category assignment of a release by selecting its checkbox on the left-hand column and clicking the Actions, Batch button on the toolbar. When copying a release the Items inside the Release will NOT be copied along. The copied Release will be unpublished and have an ordering of 0.

Delete a release by selecting it and clicking on the Actions, Delete button. Deletion is not possible if the Release has items. You will need to remove all items associated with that release first. Deleting a release is an irreversible change. If you are not sure, unpublish instead of removing the release.

You can edit a release by clicking on its name (the Version column) in the list.

You can add one or more new releases by clicking on the New button.

You can edit the category the release is in by clicking on the name of the category in the Category column.

Do note that when filtering by Category you will no longer see the Category printed underneath the version. All items displayed obviously belong to the Category you are filtering by.

Editing or adding a release

The release editor page consists of the following fields:

Category
Choose the category where the release will be placed in.

Tip

If you had filtered the releases list based on a category, that category will be automatically selected in this box! Filter the list, save some time.

Version
The version number of this release. This is essentially the title of the release.

We strongly recommend using the PHP version_compare() or Semantic Versioning version number schemes.

Alias
This is the alias (slug) appended to the URL pointing to that release's page. It's best to keep it short and only use lowercase unaccented Latin letters (a-z), numbers (0-9), dashes and underscores. Leave empty to derive it automatically from the Version (recommended).

Maturity
If you are using ARS for software distribution, select the maturity level of this release. The possible options are Alpha, Beta, Release Candidate and Stable. Please note that this is NOT automatically detected from the release's version since there are many different ways to version non-stable releases on top of the PHP and Semantic Versioning ways.

Enabled
Should it be visible to your users? Set to off to hide the category from view.

Access
The Joomla! access level / view level to apply to the release. You can create custom view levels, effectively choosing which user groups should be granted access.

Please note that users can NOT download Items in a Release they don't have access to, even if they have access to the Items themselves.

Moreover, users will NOT have access to a Release if they don't also have access to its Category. In other words, setting a Category's access to Special and a Release's access under this category to Public will NOT allow non-administrator users to access it.

Show unauthorised links Should a link to the Release be displayed even if the user does not have access to it or its parent Category? Will result in a 403.

Redirect URL for unauthorized If the option above is set to Yes, users without access to the category or release will be linked to this URL instead. For example, a page on your site which explains how to get access.

Created Date When this Release was first made available. Corresponds to the created_on field in the database. If left blank it will be replaced by the date and time when you click on the Save button.

Created By The user who created this Release. Corresponds to the created_by field in the database. If left blank it will be replaced by your user.

Language Only show this Release when the site is viewed in the selected language. Choose All to always display.

Description
Use the WYSIWYG editor to type in a description to be displayed for this release. You can use plugins freely.