GZDOOM Version vs Changelog

[boostaddicted]

Hey all, my first post. Thanks for all the work done with GZDOOM and allowing people to play with many extra added features!

I was curious as to the differences between the available latest version and what is updated in the changelog. Are features added to a beta version, tested, and then later added to the stable version? Might sound silly, but I swear I tried to figure it out on my own

[Redneckerz]

Hey all, my first post. Thanks for all the work done with GZDOOM and allowing people to play with many extra added features!

I was curious as to the differences between the available latest version and what is updated in the changelog. Are features added to a beta version, tested, and then later added to the stable version? Might sound silly, but I swear I tried to figure it out on my own

Welcome to the ZDoom Forums and please enjoy your stay

You are quite right - GZDoom differentiates between a ''release'' build and a socalled ''devbuild''. Release builds contain functionality that is, to the best of the author's knowledge, bugfree and ready for playable release.

Devbuilds are however automated builds made from the source repositories. They include any change made by the maintainers since and are thus also called ''bleeding edge'' builds on occassion, but they are untested and are generally considered less stable than release-builds.

Alongside these, there is QZDoom. Once a testbed for every new GZDoom feature, it is now a more experimental platform where new and innovative ideas are ran. These may or may not appear in GZDoom, but this is generally less so these days.

Hopefully this answers your question, and once more, enjoy your stay!

[3saster]

To add to Red's response, GZDoom's source code is located on Github, a website for hosting repositories, and keeping track of every little change made to the source code. The commits are the individual changes made, and the comment on them (usually) explains what the commit does. You can see each change done by regularily checking the repo, or alternatively joining the ZDoom discord, which has a bot that posts every time a commit is pushed. The numbers and letters at the end of each devbuild name (079e7ee4ein gzdoom-x64-g4.4pre-320-g079e7ee4e.7z, for example) is (a portion of) the hash number corresponding to the commit it goes up to, with the number in front of it (320 in this case) saying how many commits more than the last stable release it is.

There are lots of resources for how to view changes and other things on Github (and it's not so hard to figure out yourself), so I'll let you figure that out, but if you just want to see what all the changes from the last stable version are, go to the Releases tab, find the latest version of GZDoom at the top, and click the link for XX commits to master since this release (the number usually differs slightly from on the devbuild site, for reasons). Here's the changes from 4.3.3, for example. Of course, remember that the latest devbuild on the DRD team is only compiled once a day, so it may not have the commits for the current day in yet (when in doubt, check the hash numbers!). Note the official GZDoom changelogs are created by looking at the added commits and their messages after release, and trying to compile a changelog for them based on that (hence why it appears later after the release). If you wondered why the changelog sometimes misses changes, you'll find out why when you try doing this

[boostaddicted]

Thank you for helping me understand! I'm a huge fan of this work!