dolphin 6.0

[JonnyH]

(04-16-2018, 10:46 AM)chumpz Wrote: 1. as the name suggests it is stable which means it has no problems or issues

Haha. Oh, wait, you're serious. Let me laugh even harder!

While "stable" releases may have a more thorough QA cycle, having "no problems or issues" effectively means there's no more changes to make to dolphin - changes aren't made for the sake of changes, but to solve problems or issues.

[Shadorino]

(04-16-2018, 10:46 AM)chumpz Wrote: i can think of a few reasons

1. as the name suggests it is stable which means it has no problems or issues
2. the added features that was not released on 5.0 will be added to 6.0
3. some people are lazy to download new dev updates
4. some people will think that the feature update is added to the latest development version

why is a feature or performance update since 5.0 not marked the release of dolphin 6.0? also is dolphin 6.0 about a feature or performance update?

You can't just take a random dev build and arbitrarily call it 6.0 and stable.

A feature freeze needs to be put in place at a giving time, and regressions and bugs have to be hunted down. That is extremely time consuming, and as I understood, it's hell for the devs, the moral is pretty low during that time.
And on top of everything else, they are already very short on staff. They can't work on the stable release, the dev builds, the forum, and the progress reports.
 
The Dolphin staff is already killing itself for us, if people are too lazy to go to the website regularly to download the latest dev build, then they don't deserve to use Dolphin, and even less complain on the forum.

[Admentus]

(04-16-2018, 10:46 AM)chumpz Wrote: 3. some people are lazy to download new dev updates

I am too lazy to download a stable build like 5.0. The installer is too much of a hassle for me. I never downloaded the Stable 5.0 and just kept on going with the development builds instead like usual (which were already up to date with the latest features and fixes). A development build is much easier and faster to replace in order to stay up to day. Just download, unpack and you're ready to go. If you are too lazy to download a new development build once in a while, you would be too lazy to download a new stable build too... So remind me, why would you need a stable build again?

I mean, you are not required to download the latest development build with every new update. Just download it is once a month to keep up with the latest features and fixes for example...

[Kurausukun]

Also, Dolphin now has an auto-updater finally, so you really have no excuse if that's your reason.

[Admentus]

(04-16-2018, 04:42 PM)Kurausukun Wrote: Also, Dolphin now has an auto-updater finally, so you really have no excuse if that's your reason.

Yeah, I have seen it has been in the works for a while. The issue only is, I have no idea how the auto-updater works and how I can update Dolphin with it... yet... Very cool feature through.

[Helios]

use the Qt UI. Dev builds default to asking to update once a progress report, stable builds will default to asking to update every time stable is released (after 5.0).

[Ivybridge11]

(04-16-2018, 10:07 PM)Admentus Wrote: Yeah, I have seen it has been in the works for a while. The issue only is, I have no idea how the auto-updater works and how I can update Dolphin with it... yet... Very cool feature through.

From what I've seen with my use of it, basically you need to be using the QT version of Dolphin and there are some update 'channel' settings you can pick from in the main settings page. Dev is the only one that seems to do anything right now.
I'm not a programmer so I can't say how it works underneath the UI, but I have noticed that the number of files it updates depends what has been updated - mostly it just updates the .exe files, but I have also seen it updating more than that when applicable. I've been using it the last week without any issues.
Edit: Ninja'd. And ah, that's what the other options do. I hadn't noticed them doing anything.

[AnyOldName3]

As no one seems to have explicitly mentioned it yet, I'm going to point out what the word stable means in the context of software releases.

All it means is that that particular release has no bugs which weren't in the previous release (called regressions), excluding bugs which are only within new features.

If a piece of software has a 3.0 release with 1,000 bugs and is so buggy that it's useless, but the latest development builds have fixed all of these and added one new one, the development builds aren't stable because of that one new bug. If a different piece of software has a 7.0 release and it's got a tiny number of bugs, but the development builds include a new feature, and that new feature has thousands of bugs and is completely unusable, but all bugs apply only to the new feature, the development builds can be considered candidates for a stable release.

Stable doesn't necessarily mean better. The point of software releases being stable is that if you use the software to do something and it works, upgrading to the next stable release won't make the thing you do stop working.

As a Dolphin-based example, let's say some hypothetical game boots into the menu perfectly, but when you actually try to start a new game or load an existing save, it crashes. If a build comes along later that means you can start a new game and load a save, then most people would prefer it, but if it made the colours in the menu look wrong, it couldn't be considered as a candidate for a stable release. If a user liked booting into the game's menu and taking screenshots of the animation in the background, though, they might prefer the older build where only the menu works, so they wouldn't want to upgrade even though loads of other people would.

[Admentus]

I feel pretty stupid now. I usually use the WX interface. I am aware the QT2 interface is supposed to be superior over the WX interface, but it is still in development right? I don't mind using the QT2 as of now, in fact I would prefer to do so. I just prefer switching to the QT2 interface when is it considered "competent" or "feature-complete". Then again, QT2 is making massive improvements over the last year.

So yeah, I never found out how the auto-update feature worked since I used the WX interface... Until today. I would still like to know if any of the developers consider the QT2 interface superior over the WX interface as of today.

[DrHouse64]

Dolphin Qt2 is very usable right now. Few issues are remaining, few features are still to be implemented, most of them are debugging features. I use it since the beginning of the month.