The problem with no releases....

Software RawTherapee
66

Yes. A rolling release is only slightly different from the already-existing dev builds. (I am, in fact, having difficulty conceptualizing anything other than occasionally version-bumping dev without a formal release process…) Also has a greater risk of “wasting a translator’s time” which seems to be a concern. Although at least one translator has gone ahead anyway recently, maybe it’s time to proceed at risk with that regard? If it’s beneficial I’m thinking of writing a script to look for orphaned strings. Something like Weblate, IMO, should wait for post-5.9

Very good point on the PP3 compatibility concern.

As far as release process goes, I’m questioning whether or not there is a benefit of doing a “release candidate” build prior to the formal release. I think there have been platform-specific glitches (primarily Windows IIRC?) in both of the past two releases from what I recall. On the other hand, the fact that Windows and Linux are automated (is MacOS automated?) with CI now should hopefully mitigate this concern.

67

Perhaps it’s time to introduce a “release” branch, where all the non-breaking fixes get merged to, so some of the “6.0” PRs can get merged? There is nothing more frustrating than investing hours into a proper PR and then it goes nowhere. It might also help to get releases out faster as features are out to the public earlier and can be tested during the weeks (months/years…) of releasing.

68

Overall I would say that local adjustments are the biggest change that has taken place since the last 5.8 release. At least give those who don’t download development versions a chance to have this feature. There will always be something that needs to be fixed and there will always be new features that will be added. That’s sad, I think it’s time to release 5.9 knowing that LA Would be available for everyone.

69

There are four PRs tagged as 6.0, and none of the owners of those PRs seem to have any issue with skipping 5.9 for those. Some of those were very high risk (such as exiv2).

There are a few such as Path filter in dynamic profile panel by nicolas-t · Pull Request #6284 · Beep6581/RawTherapee · GitHub where it was questioned whether or not it should be a 5.9 item, technically dev is in feature freeze so I’m assuming at this point it’s now moved to 6.0 since it’s a new feature as opposed to a bugfix/camera support item.

Right now the big blocker for a release seems to be translations/strings cleanup, there’s a separate thread for those efforts. We already found a UI bug due to cruft in the translation files, I’m going to do a PR to fix that tonight hopefully.

70

Hello there, I just created an account at the forums to reply to this!

I am an end user, not a developer. I strongly agree that any sign of activity would be good and encouraging. Any update of the website, mentioning something, not necessarily about a future release.

I understand there are only a few developers working on RT, who also have other obligations. I also hope that the head developer/maintainer you mentioned above is in good health.

I wish the best to everyone and I thank you for creating such a software!

Regards, Harry

4 Likes
71

Hi Harry, welcome to pixls,

In case you don’t know, here are the development builds that are quite stable:

Direct download links to the latest RawTherapee development version.

Greetings.

1 Like
72

Hello Arturo, thank you for your welcome and for your reply!

My intention was mainly to emphasize that something new on the website would be good.

I will try the development version as I just found out there is now the possibility to make local adjustments and I’d like to explore that. Until now I have never tried a dev version as I expected the stability to be better at standard releases.

Thank you again, have a nice day!

1 Like
73

FWIW, I agree.

I’ve been using dev releases for a while, but to the ‘outside world’ in general per the website nothing has changed in the better part of 2.5 years. I’m not sure exactly what the verbiage could be, but just a small website update stating that development is continuing and a new version is in the works would IMO go a long way. I wonder how many people see the age of the stable version and just move on, never learning of PIXLS nor the dev releases.

5 Likes
74

" Nel caso non lo sapessi, ecco le build di sviluppo abbastanza stabili:

Collegamenti per il download diretto all’ultima versione di sviluppo di RawTherapee.

Saluti."

This link should be inserted on the site, in the “download” section.
The current link only downloads the old version,

75

It is already in rawpedia, in the Development Builds section.

https://rawpedia.rawtherapee.com/Download

76

Thanks, but it is not “automatic” for anyone who goes to a software site to have to go looking for the file to downlo
ad from elsewhere.
There is the “download” section and usually one uses that.
It took me a long time to get here and know that there is a newer file that I can use.
And how many give up before getting there?

77

In fact when I got here my first question was:
“I’d like to use Raw Therapee, but is he still alive?”

78

I’m just a user. On the official website
https://rawtherapee.com/
I guess they can only announce the stable program and not the development builds. I don’t know the reason.

1 Like
79

The project and website can advertise whatever they want. But there isn’t a consensus among developers and other prominent people in the project on what to do.

80

It’s not that the stable releases are the only ones that can be published. There used to be development builds available for download on the website before the redesign.

81

I do prefer the stable/development two-pronged approach, not necessarily to show activity but to provide users with the choice between stability and the chance to try and test new things.

82

Hi,

I, as average user, really appreciate the work the developers put in the RawTherapee. Few days ago I found this statement - citation:

“Time-based release trains have been shown to produce the best quality Free software. A time based release is one that does not wait for either features, or bug fixes - but is based (as purely as possible) on time. This enforces discipline in introducing fixes, gives predictability, and allows more regular releasing. It is also the case that we will necessarily release earlier, and then rapidly, incrementally bug fix releases based on the previous stable version. Thus if you have a need for the very highest quality version, it can make sense to defer a move until the first or perhaps second minor point release.”

Source - LibreOffice Release Plan: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleasePlan

I am also, as some folks above, just an end user. I don’t have any expirience in programming except some limited and very outdated knowledge from high school about 30+ years ago.

But I think that the cited above viewpoint from Libreoffice / Document Foundation makes a lot of sense.

If you tend to delay release to the point that nobody can even predict when it will be, gradually more and more end users seek to find something newer. It may be especially true for new or average Linux users who usually install apps from reccomended repositories, like Ubuntu users (myself for a long time, now trying Manjaro from time to time). In official repositories are only official releases - in case of RawTherapee - 5.8, which has two years and does not support newer cameras.

The less end user base, the less developers will be interested in participation of development, I think, especially for regular and not ad-hoc basis. And the circle closes.

Some semi-official solution was introduced some times ago: we can download developer editions of RawTherapee from Github. However, I believe this is not enough, because these editions are not included in repositiories of main Linux distributions. Also users are forced to look for developer editions by themselves.

I think, as the end user, that the simple solution from LibreOffice is what RawTherapee needs: apart from what developers aims for in their long-term plans, for example once a year should be officialy released a next version of the app (like 5.9 - 5.10 - 5.11 and so on) and if it has some bugs they can be fixed with next minor version (like 5.9.1 - 5.9.2 and so on) and what is especially important - it can be done without any special effort - just renamed subsequent developer versions. The same that are semi-official now, but quite hard to find for average user and obviously ignored by Linux distributions maintainers. And when the developers achieve what they planned, they just can change main number version with next release (now: from 5 to 6).

This - without additional effort other than assignig the numbers to subsequent developer versions - resolves all the problems:

(1) End users get updated versions of RT from its official site, that can work with their newer cameras.

(2) Developers of Linux distributions/repositories in various distributions get updated versions of RT (or its sources) from its official site and maybe even can help with packaging or bug resolving.

(3) Everybody can easily see that the project is not dead or in coma and it can encourage to participate in it.

It actually seem to work for LibreOffice. I am not German, nor live in Germany, probably not even a germanophile but I appreciate their very practical approach to the problem (Document Foundation is based in Germany, I think). But this is just my two cents, I don’t have expirience in maintaining or developing any kind of software.

With kind regards to developers and users,

Al

PS. Sorry for my English, it is not my native language.

7 Likes
83

You don’t need to sell the RT team on such a thing - time-based releases (approximately every 6 months if I recall correctly) WERE standard release policy until the lead developer (who was the one who primarily coordinated releases) started disappearing for extended periods of time without warning during the pandemic.

The rest of the team initially started just waiting for him (after all I think many of us were also generally burnt out during the pandemic), but then started working on picking up the pieces and trying to figure out the release process earlier this year. He actually showed up last weekend but I have no idea whether he will just disappear again.

As mentioned earlier in this thread, the main thing remaining for a release is not waiting for a feature, or even bugfixes post feature freeze - if the whole world spoke English and there was no translation work to do, it would probably be safe to pop out a release right now with no effort.

But we don’t live in such a world, and thus a part of release management after “feature freeze” (which is where RT has been for any major feature other than basic camera support tasks) is “strings freeze” and “translations”. Right now RT is somewhere in between those phases, where the remaining developer team is trying to figure out the exact definition of “review default”, and handle that task before kicking off the translators. If there isn’t an effort to clean up the strings before kicking off the translators, they waste their time trying to figure out which feature is associated with a given string in the UI, only to realize - it isn’t used anywhere!

Also, remember, everyone is a volunteer. I took on some of the strings cleanup tasks despite having never worked with that stuff before, but I’ve had other things in real life conflict. I’m hoping to maybe finally get around to finishing up my pull request tonight.

8 Likes
84

I am a software developer. How can I help with releases?

2 Likes
85

From a purely PR perspective i think it would be good idea to consider some posts on the website detailing the situation and the types of discussions that are going on over here (such as in this thread). Being able to communicate that there is active discussions going on will provide users some peace of mind that the project is on-going and even if things are a little difficult at the moment there are plenty of people who care and are wanting to move things forward.

I’m happy to write something if you’d like, but it might require some input from the folks doing the real work.

Even simple, short news posts summarizing the state of the project would help (as the last post is from 04 FEB 2020).

If @Morgan_Hardwood gets upset I’ll buy him a beer. If he’s still upset I will continue buying him a beer until he’s not.

17 Likes