In PB 2017-R2 the environment object has the following values:
PBMajorRevision = 17
PBMinorRevision = 0
PBFixesRevision = 0
PBBuildNumber = 1756
With R2 and future R3 having new features, I think it would be useful for PBMinorRevision to be set to something other than zero. It would be helpful for PFC for example where not everyone might be on the same release. Code relating to new features could be disabled by checking the values.
Many companies have code in application startup that checks to make sure the developer has the correct version of PowerBuilder installed. Taking advantage of these revision properties would be helpful all around.
would this also bring us versioned dll names? If minor version would be 3 for R3, then dlls should be named pb...173.dll and exe should be named PB173.exe
Like that, we don't need to uninstall PB for each new release and lose all our settings.
Moreover and even more important we would be able to install different applications on client machines that were built with different PB releases. Also we would be able to install different PB releases on the same machine to maintain older releases of our application (which might be built with old PB releases). This is really essential for shops like us with hundreds of customers all running on different releases of our applications.
Having one (virtual) machine for each developer and each (minor) PB release is a nightmare and requires constant logging out and logging in.
We are about to return to first release of PB2017 and will skip all future minor releases if you do not change your policies here and think about new ways of how to deploy your next releases.
Thank you and best regards,
Marc