What's a good word for something that is close to being the real thing without being the real thing?...

# codereview

[Brendan Weinstein]

What's a good word for something that is close to being the real thing without being the real thing?

The context is naming an android build variant for internal customers that will be signed with the release keystore, have the same package name as the production release, and have a debug tools menu available. This build would exist for testing things like google play billing, single sign-on within a suite of company apps, and 3rd party oauth.

[Dominaezzz]

Mock? (I'm thinking mocktails)
Fake? (Debatable)

[Brendan Weinstein]

I love Mocktails -- but it didn't pass the internal smell test

[Brendan Weinstein]

current best candidate is TestRelease

[Brendan Weinstein]

The idea being we want it to be difficult for someone to accidentally deploy this build to alpha/beta/production tracks

[Giorgos Neokleous]

TestRelease sounds fine. You can set the version code to always be 1 so that any deploy fails on uploading to play store.

[Brendan Weinstein]

So we couldn't name it testRelease because of an android gradle plugin rule (flavor name cannot start with test). We are going with the name releaseTest for the flavor, and then we remove releaseTestDebug from variants so there is just releaseTestRelease remaining.

the 1 version code is a good idea. I think the only problem is I think we need to have a versionCode that is at least as high as the version code of a build in alpha, beta, or prod in order to test google play billing end-to-end

[Mike]

Facsimile? IMO, Mock is a poor choice (unless I misunderstood the intent) as Mock is more of a fake, and you're looking for 'real'.

[codeslubber]

StagingRelease? often staging is used as a name for a mirror of production that is meant to show anything we might encounter (or have) without touching production? a replica.. ?

[Brendan Weinstein]

We thought about using Staging in the name but it might incorrectly imply that the build would be pointed at our staging APIs

[Joris PZ]

Simulacrum or Ringer ?

[willmadison]

FacadeRelease?

[Brendan Weinstein]

I like facade and simulacram, not sure where ringer comes from

[Mike]

English slang phrase. He's a dead ringer for you. Meaning looks exactly like you or doppleganger.

I think more in the gangster era of US.