Re: Schema.org version 16 is live

 Hi Omar,

A little bit of clarification on how/where release files are published and
stored, and reference to a minor recent issue in this area.

When each release is built, a set of definition files are created in a
directory named as per the version number (eg. version/20.0)  and included
in the build of the static schema.org website to be deployed to the hosting
platform.  For convenience a redirecting link is configured from
https://schema.org/version/latest/* to that directory.

For host sizing, upload timing, and potential usage reasons, only the
current version release files are uploaded to the Schema.org site.

At the same time a copy of the release files directory is archived into the
schemaorg GitHub repository in the data/releases code folder:
https://github.com/schemaorg/schemaorg/tree/main/data/releases

Developers wishing to access any of thes files have two options.  For the
currently published release they can access them directly via
https://schema.org/version/latest/* URLs - as per the links on the
Developers page. For that and any previous release versions they are
available for inspection and download in the public GitHub repository from
the  https://github.com/schemaorg/schemaorg/tree/main/data/releases folder.

Due to a recent minor technical issue the archive release files for
versions 16.0 - 20.0 were not added to the GitHub repository.  These
missing versions have now been added.

~Richard.


On 23 May 2023 at 15:00:19, Omar Holzknecht <omar.holzknecht@onlim.com>
wrote:

> Hello Dan,
>
> this sounds like a good plan to quickly publish improvements and react to
> typos and bugs. I wonder if increasing the release counter by one for every
> small change is a good idea though, especially since now there seems to be a
> new schema.org version every working day
> <https://schema.org/docs/releases.html>. I guess every new release should
> also include vocabulary definition files in different formats
> <https://github.com/schemaorg/schemaorg/tree/main/data/releases/> for us
> developers, as it has been until version 15.0. After all, we need to fetch
> and parse the versions listed in the release log
> <https://github.com/schemaorg/schemaorg/blob/main/versions.json>, to be
> schema-version-aware and so (semi-)automatically adapt our tools and data
> to the changes of schema.org.
>
> Since I couldn't find new vocabulary definition files at
> github/data/releases
> <https://github.com/schemaorg/schemaorg/tree/main/data/releases/> I
> checked the page for developers
> <https://schema.org/docs/developers.html#defs>, where only the latest
> version is listed, e.g.
> https://schema.org/version/latest/schemaorg-all-https.jsonld
>
> I changed "latest" to "20.0" (the latest version at time of writing this
> email) in the URL and i got the same vocabulary, as expected:
> https://schema.org/version/20.0/schemaorg-all-https.jsonld
>
> Changing the version string to earlier releases did not work though:
> https://schema.org/version/18.0/schemaorg-all-https.jsonld
>
> I guess those vocabulary definition files must be stored somewhere, else
> the latest versions could not have been served as it is currently with
> "20.0". I hope some clarification can be provided about these vocabulary
> definition files in the context of these faster release cycles.
>
> Thank you very much for your work, Dan.
>
> Sinc. Omar Holzknecht
>
>
>
> On 17.05.23 05:21, Dan Brickley wrote:
>
>
> See https://schema.org/ and https://schema.org/docs/releases.html for
> details.
>
> From this release, the Schema.org workflow is simplified. Roughly - we
> discuss things here and in Github, and the main schema.org site is
> periodically updated. There is no reason for updates to sit around for
> weeks or months while a larger release is put together - if something is a
> fix or improvement, let's push it live asap. In the (reasonably rare) cases
> when a bad change is made, we can follow up with good changes immediately
> afterwards. Our history since 2011 is pretty clear: there are always bugs,
> releases have always improved things, and conflicts are rare.
>
> I and others have found that the combination of (a) having an editorial
> drafting/staging site at webschemas.org (b) the remnants of our old
> subdomain-based extensions system ("____.schema.org" URLs e.g.
> pending.schema.org) and (c) the "Pending area" concept itself, taken
> together, tend to cause needless confusion, and add friction to the
> development and maintenance process. They also create technical debt and
> conceptual complexities that make it harder to share the workload with
> community members who have not spent 10+ years on the project.
>
> I shall try to put this into practice and make some additional changes
> (for consistency with the above, as well as addressing open issues) over
> the coming days. For each release, we should just increment the release
> counter by one. A release for this kind of a project should not be a big
> occasion but a natural and frequent side effect of maintenance and
> improvement.
>
> cheers,
>
> Dan
>
>

-- 
Richard Wallis
Founder, Data Liberate
http://dataliberate.com
Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/richardwallis
Twitter: @dataliberate @rjw