The discussion is about migrating from the tests-passed branch to the stable branch in Discourse. Wurzelseppi tried to migrate but encountered an error due to a missing column in the database. pfaffman advised that the stable branch is not yet compatible with the current version and recommended staying with tests-passed.
Wurzelseppi expressed concerns about running a productive environment in beta mode, but pfaffman reassured him that tests-passed is better supported and recommended. merefield shared their experience of running tests-passed for two years without major issues and highlighted the advantage of better third-party support.
The conversation shifted to the idea of adding a comment in the standalone.yml and web_only.yml files to recommend tests-passed explicitly. Falco was torn about the idea, suggesting that most users wouldn’t see the file, and those who do might not follow the recommended guidance. pfaffman argued that the current commented line doesn’t provide enough guidance, and a stronger hint is needed.
Ultimately, Falco decided to delete the lines in question, and pfaffman suggested adding a strong recommendation for tests-passed instead.
Hi guys,
just wanted to migrate from 2.3.0beta9 to stable release and got this error:
What can I do here ?
Caused by:
PG::UndefinedColumn: ERROR: column “email_private_messages” of relation “user_options” does not exist
LINE 1: UPDATE “user_options” SET “email_private_messages” = FALSE, …
Thanks and greetings,
Wurzelseppi
You can’t switch to stable until stable catches up with the you. You can make the switch at the next stable release.
Why do you want to switch to stable?
Hi,
feeling a bit uneasy when running our productive environment in beta mode, to be frank …
But maybe you guys can relief me of that uneasyness ? 
Greetings,
Julian
If you search here you’ll see that the tests passed branch is better supported than the stable branch.
Thanks… then I´ll stay @ test-passed…
Have been running with tests-passed for over two years on one of my sites and can’t recall any showstopping bugs whatsoever.
The bigger advantage is most plugins explicitly keep functional compatability with tests-passed so you get better third party support running that.
Hey, @Falco. This is the second time this has come up in as many weeks. Maybe there should be a comment in standalone.yml and web_only.yml that says something like
## Which Git revision should this container use? tests-passed is the best-supported and recommended for most installations
rather than
## Which Git revision should this container use? (default: tests-passed)
I’m torn about that.
99% of the users won’t ever see the file since ./discourse-setup hides all the complexity.
The users going to the file, and reading a commented line, researching the alternative values of the key, and opting into a different one, while managing to ignore the various warnings in Meta are difficult ones.
We could just hide the key from that commented line, making it harder to shoot yourself in the foot.
Obviously those folks aren’t the problem.
My point is that the commented line currently doesn’t give them any guidance and the knee-jerk for someone who does know what a branch is things “All I know is that my bosses want things to be stable.”
Whether to remove any hint of how to change branches or give them a stronger hint not to change it without learning a bit more is a fine question.
I’d say let’s delete those lines then:
I’d say “tests-passed is STRONGLY recommended”, but you’re the one who can make commits. 