Regular working with 5.0 master?

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1

Hello,
I have used JabRef 4.3.1 for some time now and really appreciate the programme. It feels just slightly laggy sometimes (with undoing changes e.g.) and not particularly shiny so I had a look at the 5.0 master and this seems so much smoother and better. Congratulations for this!
My question is: Is the current master fit for regular work? I have followed Github some time so I know there are of course some bugs and not every feature is implemented. But I can expect the master to work more or less without crashes and data losses (no guarantee needed)? In case I’m going for it: Should I update the master every week or so or what is a reasonable approach?
Thanks!

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2

Hi,

the current master should be relatively stable. We are planning to release a beta in a couple of days probably and the stable version when all major issues are fixed.
The master get’s updated whenver a new commit is made. Some are bug fixes, others are soley updating libraries or fixes in our build system. So there is no real rule on how often you should update.

Note that the version 5 has some changes, the markings are transformed to a group. So this might be an incompatible change to the 4.x version.
As stated in our licence, we don’t give any warranties, so we cannot guarantee any losses.

3

Thank you, I appreciate your reply! I’ll give the beta a go then and look forward to it.

4

Hey, I saw a few commits being tagged as 5.0-beta, but they are removed now. Is the beta release postponed or what’s the matter with that?

5

Hi,
yes there were some problems with the installer/packaging and the version numbering scheme and some things regarding our build/deployment pipeline.
Those seems to be fixed so you can hopefully expect a release in the next days.

We will publish a blog post when it’s released.

6

@CharlesV Beta is now out :wink:
Get it from https://downloads.jabref.org

7

I use it for regular work; there are some issues but only occasionally they hinder working with my standard library, I have still installed 4.1 but donot use it any further. You had to be flexible with the medline import, but that works with the latest dev version. Myself beeing on win7, I have no further issues with the latest versions, while still a lot of issues are open.