I’ve been getting my RawTherapee updates from http://ppa.launchpad.net/dhor/myway/ubuntu, from which I had installed rawtherapee-unstable. That package was last updated 2017-02-17. Thanks to being too busy lately, I failed to notice that I suddenly stopped getting my frequent updates to RawTherapee. Looking in the PPA confirms that rawtherapee-unstable for Ubuntu 16.04 was last updated on that date, while rawtherapee was last updated 2017-05-16.
My question (and I’m unsure whether I should be asking the RawTherapee team, or Dariusz Duma as the PPA owner) is:
is rawtherapee-unstable dormant for now because 5.1 is pretty new, or is it something that is frozen forever? And if there will be a rawtherapee-unstable again at some point in the future, what is the trigger that makes that happen?
I think as people start getting ready for new features in 5.2 you will see unstable development releases. Right now there’s not much of a difference between 5.1 and the development branch (There is an optimization and bug fix for microcontrast).
Unstable releases (or rolling releases) are builds made from the dev branch. Commits on this branch are done by the developpers to correct bugs or introduce new features when sufficiently tested.
Stable releases are snapshots of the dev branch and tagged (e.g. 5.1) in the releases branch ( see https://github.com/Beep6581/RawTherapee/issues/3660)
Today, the dev branch is ahead of 18 commits on 5.1 stable release .
So it’s up to your package builder to decide when to build or not an unstable release.
@elGordo, my RT was automatically updated to 5.1 last week, under Ubuntu 16.10. I thought I was using the dhor ppa but am a bit confused now as to where it’s coming from given what you say. “About” currently looks like this -
The main version details are blank sadly.
@Dariusz_Duma or anyone, how do I find out where my RT is coming from please?
The stable release (without -unstable) is missing details in About window due to my lack of knowledge what variable I have to set up to put proper number there (About). Previously there was ReleaseInfo.cmake or something like that. Anyway, will fix this in the future but until then it is better to have a new version in PPA
Rawtherapee-unstable daily build is broken due to Launchpad bug. There was commit in RT repository with new additional tag/tags. Since then Launchpad is unable to download sources. It’s well known bug but without solution so far (the only one I know is to create mirror of RT source). I’ll try push Launchpad developers to look into this.
But who needs -unstable build since we have new RT releases so frequently
The tools/generateReleaseInfo script creates ReleaseInfo.cmake.
I do intend to frequently make stable releases if possible, so far it’s been going well. People who would like to test development builds can easily follow the compilation guide.
I had originally started using rawtherapee-unstable based on comments in this thread:
Back when that thread was posted (May 2016), I think the advice to use rawtherapee-unstable probably caused a bunch of people to become de facto testers. Just add the PPA, install the package, and let the updates install whenever the updater runs. I’m pretty certain more people were running the code that way than would have been if they all had to manually download and build from source.
The present situation (rawtherapee-unstable being older than rawtherapee) means rawtherapee-unstable is no longer fulfilling that role.
Personally, I see some benefit in there being an -unstable build just to get more (unwitting?) testers aboard.
