As it is now, by design Drupal offers updates only if newer stable releases come out for modules & themes. There is an issue with people that use dev versions though... please take a look at
#728708: Once you install the latest stable, you aren't offered newer dev releases in site's 'Available updates' page... →
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Short (as possible) description of a use case:
- A site admin uses a dev version of a module in order to test new features and offer feedback to the module's developers. Intention is to help the community in general by beta testing.
- New dev builds are released every now and then and updates are made as the development of the module proceeds. The admin is offered these dev updates and so they upgrade and continue giving feedback.
- At some point a new stable version comes out and is offered as an update.
- If the admin updates their site to this latest stable release, they are never offered newer dev versions anymore. No way to know if new beta-stage features were added. No way to help beta-testing this way.
- If the admin chooses to stay with the latest dev build and not update to latest stable, they will be offered stable releases as updates and their site will always show as 'out of date' in the status report.
I know there are workarounds to this, but they are all 'manual' as opposed to an automated procedure. If this feature I am suggesting is implemented through the core update.module, it would provide a familiar way of latest updates being offered, be it dev or stable releases. This could be a checkbox option with a 'for advanced users only!' warning in the site's update options.
The workarounds to this issue include:
- Updating to the latest stable and then 'manually' visiting each module's project page and search for any new dev builds. That's time consuming and frustrating to people that only mean to help with beta testing and Drupal's advancement in general. Eventually one is forced to simply give it up and only 'play-it-safe' and use stable releases.
- Using the Update status advanced settings module to simply ignore the stable release. This does solve the site's 'out of date' state issue, but leaves the update offered in the 'Available updates page' and also leaves you with no other option but to ignore a recent, stable release. That is if you ever want to be notified of new devs automatically.
Some might oppose to this because dev builds are considered unsafe. They'll emphasize on the fact that they should never be offered as updates through the core update system. Keep in mind though that dev builds are the lazy-beta-tester's way of applying latest patches without asking how to manually do so. As a result, we get less 'how do I apply this patch?' questions in the issues' queues and more people willing to test new features...
more beta-testers = more quality feedback before going stable
So, please no bitter comments and 'won't fix'es. Leave this set to 'active' or at least 'postponed' and someone might step in with a patch or a hack that'll save the day.
Thank you in advance.