IMHO, Beta should not have auto update. It is for testing purpose and testing only it be until the full version is released.
There's arguments for both sides of whether to auto-update a beta build or not but seems to be more so on the side that it's ok (with opt-out) for betas and then the opposite for release (opt-in by default). But when it comes to betas, having things kept on a recent set of builds is more beneficial and is why the potential to auto-update a beta (within reason) is more appropriate and is part of the reason why the beta builds eventually expire as a build from october 2016 is no use to me to get feedback about when we're into builds from april 2017.
Hope that makes sense and whatever is finally decided upon (which I'll need to work on it sooner rather than later) will within reason allow for opting out but the expiry nature will be maintained for the beta builds due to my reasoning above and by agreeing to beta test builds I hope it makes sense why such things are done (if only to try to make things a bit easier for me).
Clean install for release version.
This is an interesting comment as I can see both sides of the fence when it comes to that point. Yes it's probably better to have a beta and a release install (for when we get to that point in time). However as WACUP becomes more mature I can also see the need to have separate installs being less important so one install that's used for everything could be feasible (which is how one of my dev+test build installs ends up being) since sometimes real usage can show up things that don't happen in a specific 'clean' install.
I've made my suggestions to the beta testers for the time being that it makes sense to install WACUP separately to any existing Winamp install but as the overall aim is for it to be able to be installed over the top of an existing Winamp install and 'just work' then there are going to be times where a clean vs separate install setup isn't going to help when it comes to the testing of things. Plus as everyone likes to do things in slightly different ways, that variety in how installs are done has been helpful (especially in the earlier WACUP beta builds) to catch issues that wouldn't have been seen until much later in the development phase where the changes that were needed would have been more painful to make compared to when they ended up being made.
But definitely how to test things is an interesting area of topic and as 100% coverage is impossible imho, sometimes just doing what people naturally do often works out the things that wouldn't be found via a more formalised process (which itself has it's benefits).
-dro
