Introduction

Hello and welcome to our documentation to help you integrate RailLab in your workflow

This documentation is aimed for system administrators and security auditors. While we try to be helpful, detailed and exhaustive, it is not possible for us to guess every formal document you might require in your corporate environment

Thus if you ever require additional information, please contact us by email: r.blin@railconcept.fr
Do include your request and document template or sample for us to reference to and we will add it to our public documentation as soon as we can

This documentation try its best to be transparent about RailLab and its services, if you ever find a vulnerability or have a question please do contact us by email: r.blin@railconcept.fr

This documentation is segmented in multiple parts:

RailLab versionning system

About IngeTime

IngeTime was RailLab’s previous name, over the time so many changes happened and Rail Concept decided to rename the software RailLab
Fundamentally IngeTime versions are (very) old versions of RailLab

Version numbers

Two versions having the same number are built from the same source code thus present exactly the same features, only the software iconography and name might change
Version numbers are indenpendent semantically from channels
Version numbering DOES NOT follows classic semantic versionning you might see in FOSS!

Instead we use our own definition that makes more sense to our end users that aren’t developers or IT professionals
Each versions is segmented into three numbers: X.Y.Z:

  • X: Major commercial version
    This number increment after enough significant changes, features additions that would be considered a whole software in other context When this number increase we do proceed with public external communication with our clients and prospects
  • Y: Major feature version
    This number increment when a significant feature has been developed and tested and is typically ready to be communicated to all our clients Breaking changes may happen (database, API) when this number change
  • Z: Minor version
    This number increment for each new version delivered within the same major feature It may contains new features to test, fixes, and other enhancements that could be needed rapidly by one or more client that can’t wait for the next major feature version Breaking changes (database, API) will not happen if only this number change

Channels

Channels is a label we put on versions depending on our target audience :

  • Alpha: Recommended for advanced users wanting the latest features or fixes, typically those users have an active communication with the dev team
  • Release Candidate: Alpha version that have been proven stable (bug free) by our testing team for an extended period gets promoted to this channel
    Recommended for our clients that needs to validate a feature set, if the client validate that version it will become a new Release
  • Release: Release Candidate version that is a landmark, for clients who have a use case that requires a long term validated version

Breaking changes

Some changes sometimes requires to break retrocompatibility of an API or a database
Those changes are clearly announced in the changelog and by a change in the Major Feature Version
RailLab has and will provide automatic migrations for databases and will be kept up to date to the most recent API version

APIs will keep a retrocompatibility with previous RailLab versions up to 2 years after which a RailLab update might be necessary depending on your reliance on that API in your workflow
However we do not plan on doing any breaking changes for any vital calls to our APIs in the foreseeable future (which is to this date only the license acquisition request)

Changelogs

Changelogs are available directly in the RLauncher or from the front page but they can also be retrieved programatically using this url:
https://download.raillab.fr/api/binaries/{channel}/{version}/CHANGELOG.md

{channel} needs to be replaced depending on the channel:

  • Release: Replace {channel} with raillab
  • Release Candidate: Replace {channel} with raillab-releasecandidate
  • Alpha: Replace {channel} with raillab-alpha

{version} must be replaced by the RailLab version like 1.2.17