[Genma Saotome]

<Admin Comment>
This a copy of a James Ross post that was requested to be pinned to the top of the forum listing. The original thread where this post appeared is here..

James Ross, on 03 August 2019 - 07:02 AM, said:

There are three official versions of Open Rails:

• Stable (1.3.1.4328, on openrails.org)
  
• Testing (X1.3.1-72-g2db3f076, on openrails.org)
  
• Unstable (U2019.07.29-1921, on james-ross.co.uk)

Each level down includes more new code, which may have had less testing and be more buggy, but also contains new features and improvements. Only the third one in the list is called "unstable".

Additionally, other people have made their own unofficial versions of Open Rails:

• OR New Year MG - similar to the latest Unstable but with even more new code
  
• ORTS MG RD "Ultimate" - similar to OR New Year MG but with a new RailDriver implementation

In terms of merging versions together, I do not think we want less than the three official versions - they now provide a good balance of stability and latest features. The new format for the official unstable version means it will actually be less stable than, but also contain more features than, the testing version.

As for the unofficial versions, we are putting a lot of effort into bringing their features and bug fixes into the official versions, but it's not a straightforward task. The people maintaining the unofficial versions, and those contributing features to them, have their own motivations and we all need to get things aligned so that as much as possible can become official.

Whilst it is not ideal for people trying to choose a version, this is the nature and a key benefit of open source - anyone can take the code and make their own version, with whatever changes the like. What we in ORMT are trying to do, is to make it as attractive as possible for putting code in the official versions on openrails.org. Progress is being made but the unofficial versions will not (and should not) disappear overnight.