Managing Beta versions of products.

[ruslan]

Hi Mantis team,

I want many months raise this issue and at last of end have catch time.

We use Mantis about 4-5 years already for our Valentina database product line. Here is URL for our Mantis
http://www.valentina-db.com/bt/

We have complex structure of product line, about 15 different products.
And since this is product LINE we have synchronized ship of versions for it.
This means that e.g. at 1 Oct we ship 3.5.6 version for all 15 products.

During next 3-6 months we develop and ship about 30-50 beta builds of 3.6.
And here problem I want describe

PROBLEM 1: Few years ago I have setup for each beta build own version of 3.6b1, 3.6b2
So it was easy to see which beta which issues resolve. Good... but not good.
a) as result we have blow out in the Version Menu, and THIS SEE btw our users also
when they do report of a bug.
b) 6 months later when I need build 3.6 RELEASE change log, I want to get accumulated
listed of all fixes for all betas, right? I do not want list of issues separated by each beta.
For now I need manually edit this (sometimes huge) list to remove mention of each beta

DREAM IS: Mantis is aware not just about Version of products, but about its kind:
3.6 release
3.6b1
3.6b2
...

and was able do smart job here for us.