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Comment by throwaway743 | Hacker News Reader

Could you just get away with modifying something small, uploading the update, then revert the change, and reupload?

Either way, it's nonsense that they force this, especially for those who made an app however long ago and just uploaded and forgot about, or that version was the only one they intended to make. It's crazy how much Google gets away with bullying us.

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Not OP, but depending on the industry, this could be enormous amounts of backend work. I have projects that needs to be validated, which effectively means a huge amount of human testing for any change. The Process is confirmed to work on version X.Y.Z and nothing else.

Luckily there is no regulation in this industry, just demanding customers.

The main issue is that we support way too many different workflows based on customer requirements and actual hardware configuration, and even a slight change to a component often means we have to do manual UX testing.

Ah interesting. Even so for like a small styling change?

A change is a change. I have certainly made a few “safe, meaningless, no possible way it could break something” edits which blew up in some unexpected way. Why take the risk for some inconsequential update? Someone has to sign off on why this commit needs to be fast tracked outside the normal process.

Almost any software I can think of has different processes for testing/validating changes depending on impact/priority.

e.g. I'm typing this on Firefox, which has a much different process for point release vs their 4-week release cycle.

I imagine that if this sort of bullheaded google policy persists, companies will start adding “piñatas” into their code that have no real impact and can be changed with barely any validation required.

This lets google beat the version numbers out of it at will.

I'd target an about page or something similar, just have a sentence or two that get picked at random from a selection each build. Then have a monthly build job that runs and publishes.

I guess you can always change the style and location of UI controls just to mess with your users. After all, Big G does it all the time. :-)

Change font on One letter on one screen. Revert back 60 days later. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

It's a pain in the ass, but to be honest, I've been asked to do worse with my time.

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