I have been using RT 5.8 and occasionally RT-Dev appimage on Linux.
I usually keep my pp3 files next to the raw files.
If I edit a file using the Dev version, I rarely (or never) need to open that file using the Stable version (unless I do that by mistake).
But if I edit a file using the Stable version, I sometimes feel the need to further edit the file using the Dev version (mainly for Local Adj right now).
So I am wondering if the stable version and Dev versions tolerate the pp3 files of each other and to what extent. Of course extra features of the Dev versions like Local adj would not work under the Stable version.
I looked up Rawpedia here - Sidecar Files - Processing Profiles - RawPedia but couldn’t find an answer. Also tried using both pp3 files across these two versions - they seem to tolerate each other - i.e. not reject anything apparently or crash.
So would like to check if this interchange is safe or should I save pp3 files with explicit version types Stable/Dev.
I always make sure that I do not mix and match development and stable/older development versions. Mistakes are easily made. That being said:
If you edit a RAW in a development version and use one of the modules/tools that are not present in the stable version (Local Adjustments being one of those) and then open that RAW in the stable version the LA parts will not be implemented and part of the edit will be lost but noting “bad” will happen. However…
Once you stop editing in stable and open that RAW in development again the previously dialled in LA parts are now gone! The stable version wrote the edit info into the pp3 and that did not include the LA parts, those are lost.
There’s also the possible issue of bugs/mishaps that have been fixed and are now part of the (pre-build) development version. Going back to edit a RAW that uses this, still present bug, in stable might give you unwanted results. And unless you are aware of all the fixed bugs you might not even be aware you ran into one.
But I really don’t see why one would want to go back to edit in the old stable version once you’ve edited using the development version. I am assuming here that one of the pre-build versions is being used (those are all but 100% stable) and not the very latest self build version which maybe has experimental/future stuff merged.
So my advice about this: Stable to development is no problem at all. Don’t go from development back to stable again.