I am so happy with AGX (kudos to @kofa and devs) that I would like to start using on a daily basis.
Considering that AGX is not yet part of the stable release, what is the recommended strategy to do that?
I currently have two versions of DT on my system, 5.2.1 and a locally built version synced at head (let’s call it DT-dev). I have been running DT-dev pointing it to a different --configdir and making sure not to insist on the same directories in the FS to prevent DT-dev from messing the XMP files of DT.
As I am not experiencing any regression with my build at head, is it reasonable to just ditch the 5.2.1 DT at this point and keep using DT-dev only? How are others in a similar situation handling the transition?
I have been using the master version for years.
Pretty rarely, a critical issue comes up. In that case, I can report it, and, for the time being, use git checkout 12345678 (replacing 12345678 with the commit ID of a previous, good version) to keep running; in extremely rare cases, also combining it with having to revert to a previous version of the database).
I’ve been riding master for years. Yesterday there was a crash when you did a selective copy/paste in darkroom. It was identified and fixed in ~12 hours.
Once or twice I’ve had to do as @kofa mentioned and check out a commit to avoid an issue until it was fixed (in 9 years).
I’ve been using latest source code (master) for DT, ART and RT. Works really well, in rare cases of serious errors I can revert to less recent code and also help fix the errors.
I personally just run the weekly windows built for the latest development build. Problems are very rare and have never been fatal for me. I do recommend having your database backed up occasionally if for if something goes wrong which has happened to me because of computer not DT version.
EDIT: I agree AgX is pretty amazing. Great work @kofa
I’ve been ok with the development versions, but I’ve had to reset AgX and other dev modules as they’ve evolved. Once or twice I’ve come across bugs that interfered with the program but these were found and corrected pretty early
If you plan to share play raws then it’s a good idea to identify your development build along with your XMP so people on the stable branches don’t get confused.
I am exactly like @kofa, I have been working on the latest & greatest master version for nearly 5 years without any major issues. If there have been issues, most of them were compile issues or buggy new modules, which I could avoid until they got fixed.
And I’m not using XMP files at all, I’m just using the library.db database file.
Because I’m using darktable across 2 PCs and having all settings (library.db, data.db, darktablerc etc.) synchronized over my own cloud server, I have a long history of files I can go back to, in addition to other regular library.db backups darktable is doing automatically.
So I’d also say that the risk of messing up completely by using the latest master version is quite low. But everybody needs to make the decision themselves, as being on the bleeding edge version means extra work in case stuff does not work, but strongly helps the developers and the rest of the community to get early feedback on issues, instead of fixing them after an official release.
It’s your decision.