Stable version or compile source

Started by AlexAUT, 21 August 2014, 10:02:27

AlexAUT

Hello, how do you handle your github repository? Do you upload only kinda stable things like SFML do or should we use the stable releases?



AlexAUT

texus

The master branch on github is always the kindof "recommended" version.

So right now it contains v0.6 with the few bug fixes that were made after the previous release.
The "unstable" stuff can be found in the v0.7-dev branch (which will be made public in one or two weeks).

At some point in the future, v0.7 will be considered stable enough and will take over the master branch while the current contents would be moved to a v0.6 branch. This happens still a long time before v0.7.0 is released, but it means that the biggest changes have been made already.

So to answer your question: it depends.
As long as the master branch contains v0.6 (latest releast version), then it is usually more stable than the last release since it contains just bug fixes or very small features.
When the master branch contains v0.7 (version in development), then it will be less stable than the releases. But it will contains tons of more features. But since it is not yet a released version (no v0.7.0 yet), things can still change and thus you can still opt for v0.6 to have a more stable, but less feature-rich version.

So once both versions are online, the first choice should not be between the release or the github version, but between the older stable version or the newer less stable version.

But it is very important to see that the time where tgui could crash by just hovering your mouse over the screen (such bug really existed in v0.3) are long gone. When I speak about bugs and unstable branches I'm talking about bugs that are usually extremely specific to certain widgets, and where they display slightly different than expected. Usually you can just keep developing while ignoring the bug and then later on update the tgui version to fix the bug.

Instead of giving this big explanation I should just have answered: look at the download page.
As long as new bugs in v0.6 are minor and only affect a select few, the latest release can still be used. If a really serious bug is found, then you will find the link to the source code linking directly to the latest github version instead of to the latest release.

Plus you can always check the latest commits to find out if it is worth taking the github version over the release.
If you look at it now you will find:
    Focused property of Gui wasn't properly copied
    List from ComboBox did not shrink when removing items
    Fixed potential bug with internal function
    Update version number to 0.6.5

So since v0.6.5 has been released, there has been a bugfix about removing an item from a combo box (very specific bug), and with copying the Gui object (something you normally don't do, plus the bug is just that the carets in edit boxes stop blinking). So its pretty safe to use the latest stable release.

Also note that I have no timetable for releases so if there have been many small bug fixes or some major bug then a new release won't be far away.

Wow, that was a long text that I just wrote :). I guess if anyone has a similar question in the future I can just point them here.

AlexAUT

Nice, thanks for the deep insight into this topic  ;)

Just wanted to know which is the right way to go before i start my new project.




AlexAUT