Change description in File Exchange contribution

Hi community,

I am currently trying to change/edit the image and description of one of my FEx contributions. I am failing to find a way to do this without updating the version of the contribution. Might this be a special case when linking to a Github repository?

I have clicked on the "New Version" button while being logged in. Until now, I have not found any other way to get into the editing dialog. There, I could change relevant things but I am forced to bump the version number (which is not my intention).

Thanks for any help on this!

[Rik]

Do you mean you have linked your submission to github?

Answer 1

[Rik]

I just tried with one of my submissions that's linked to GitHub.

If you click the edit button (see screenshot below) you will be able to edit the parts that are not derived from your repository.

I edit the description (adding a single word) and that did not require me to change the version number.

Note that I'm using the GitHub release mode.

[JAAdrian]

Thanks @Rik for this answer! I think the relevant info was in the end: using the release mode. I am currently in default branch mode and this might be the key difference. In the very place of the "Edit" button in your screenshot, I only see a "New Version" button.

Answer 2

[Matt J]

No, there is no way to edit any part of your FEX submission without upping the version number.

I'm not sure it would be a good idea to do so. The documentation is part of the software. If it changes, for whatever small reason, you would want a new version number to reflect it, just as you would for a change, however small, to the code.

[Walter Roberson]

I have been in meetings with Mathworks in which people have asked for the ability to edit without generating new numbers, so I know that the difficulty has been raised with Mathworks.

[Rik]

While I agree in general, I prefer being able to change cosmetic stuff I might have forgotten during the update (updating the image, fixing typos in the description text, etc). I prefer not to have my version history cluttered with 'fixed typo in description'.

Maybe if I were using patch version levels (ie. the versioning system with major.minor.bugfix.patch) I would be ok with all changes being tied to a version increment, but in that case I would not want the update to show up in the activity feed.

[JAAdrian]

Yes, same for as for @Rik. I like and advocate (semantic) versioning very much but in the case of just fixing typos or the image, I do not really see the risk to mislead users. In contrast, as a user, I would be puzzled if I saw a bumped (patch-) version but no real diff in the changelog. Especially if the code lives on Github.

Who knows, maybe this website workflow will be changed in the future...

Thanks for all your support!

[Matt J]

I don't use Github, but I think there must be a way to obtain a filtered view of the version changes to exclude the minor change identifiers.

[Walter Roberson]

Mathworks has told us that they use the version numbers to know whether to advise the user to update the entry in the Add-On Explorer.

If you updated images or fixed typos, then do you want it to be suggested that the user install the updated version? I guess that is going to depend upon how big a difference it makes to the understanding of the instructions.