Nightlies releases

[stezza]

Have the Nightlies now become the weeklies, or fortnightlies?

It's not a dig!

[Zdravko.Keremidchiev]

check this post: https://forums.chaosgroup.com/forum/...after-june-6th

[Jimmi]

So your link hints that there will only be "nightly" releases whenever there are actual updates to that code-branch, which can be from day to day or even have weeks in between. Is that how its supposed to be understood?
Since it could then occasionally be a while in between then it would be great if there was some way of getting a notification each time. Perhaps just a thread here on the forum where you guys give a heads up to new releases?

Would be great to know a bit more about what your approach is to the nightly builds and how we should relate to them.
Is the nightlies supposed to be only for "hot-fix" scenarios or do you also use it to test new features?
I often check just in order to see which fixes(or features) have come in, so I can judge if I should give it a test, or see if changes would match up in my head to potential scenarios we have encountered in production.

I noticed that there was actually a new update today, but when I check the the release_notes they are identical to the one in the previous version which was released a couple of weeks ago.
So, this confuses things a bit for me, given the above.

[svetlozar.draganov]

So your link hints that there will only be "nightly" releases whenever there are actual updates to that code-branch, which can be from day to day or even have weeks in between. Is that how its supposed to be understood?

Yes, Stable builds are not built at specific time. They are built when important fix or feature is introduced. The idea of those builds is to be as stable as possible, which means that only specific and tested code could be added there.

Since it could then occasionally be a while in between then it would be great if there was some way of getting a notification each time. Perhaps just a thread here on the forum where you guys give a heads up to new releases?

Announcements are made for official builds only, a nightly or stable build are not considered as a new release.

Would be great to know a bit more about what your approach is to the nightly builds and how we should relate to them.
Is the nightlies supposed to be only for "hot-fix" scenarios or do you also use it to test new features?

Nightly builds are more for internal consumption. It is always recommended to use official build instead of nightly build because very often there are broken things.
The only real reason to use a nightly build is a very important hot-fix which you need urgently, like mentioned above those fixes goes into the Stable builds.

I often check just in order to see which fixes(or features) have come in, so I can judge if I should give it a test, or see if changes would match up in my head to potential scenarios we have encountered in production.I noticed that there was actually a new update today, but when I check the the release_notes they are identical to the one in the previous version which was released a couple of weeks ago.

Release notes as announcements are only available for the official release. It would be better to make decisions for your production pipeline based on official builds of V-Ray where everything is much stable than in the nightlies.
From what I can understand so far you are thinking of a nightly build as a fully functional official release of V-Ray. This is not the case though, those builds are mainly for internal usage, that's why they are not announced anywhere, they don't have release notes and etc. Official builds are released about 5 times per year, which is not that long period to wait for. Furthermore if you find an issue and contact us via Forum post of via email, we will let you know if this is a known issue and if already have a fix for it in the Stable builds.


Let me know if that information is useful enough or if you have any recommendations for improving our current workflow.

[Jimmi]

Hi Svetlozar

Thanks for your elaborate answer, great to know.

I think the nightly builds has also changed slightly in "purpose" over the years, so getting the current setup re-iterated is probably not a bad thing
In the old days the nightlies were in fact "nightly".
The new "stable-nightlies" seems to be a great setup for hot-fixes, and its more explicit than the actual nightlies which you could not really trust the nightly builds (as they were often broken), and I see that as a good improvement to the setup.
A couple of years back(so 2.x days) it was actually one of my main issues with the nightlies setup.
Huge speed improvements and feature implementations were done in the nighlies at the time, but you could not trust the stability of any particular release and therefore it was a gamble to run on them(but with 20% speedups the gamble was worth it often).

We do run everything on the official builds unless there is a particular hotfix that we are in need of, so for production needs we are aligned

In my experience its been good to keep an eye on the nightly build change-log.
I have occasionally found fixes for bugs which we have encountered in production, but have not been able to nail down enough for us to do a support request. Saving me some time and letting me react faster to production issues that I we might suddenly encounter.

Having another branch where we could test new features or larger "fixes" with the full knowledge that the build is not "stable" would be great.
Larger fixes like, lets say, the cryptomatte support for vrayproxy/vrayscene had an initial implementation( hint hint ), I would love to be able to do an early test on it and potentially flesh out pipeline setups around it at an early stage (so that once the release is out officially we would be ready.)

For the full new releases with lots of new features, I assume you have some kind of "beta-setup" with particular users, so the above point is only for "large feature-fixes" (if that makes sense).

But all in all nice things to know. I think that people just tend to respond to any changes in patterns they see

Again, thanks for your reply.
Jimmi

[svetlozar.draganov]

Yes, in version 2.x days nightly builds were nightmare for both ChaosGroup and users.
The problem was exactly as you described it, lot's of important bug fixes which unfortunately comes with another bugs and no one was happy about that.
In version 3.x we decided to change that and to build a new version of the nightly builds where we will upload only extensively tested bug-fixes and new features - and that's how stable builds were born.
Looking back this was a very good move from our side since now we don't have complains that something's broken in the stable builds - usually people are happy with those builds and they are suitable for production.

There isn't much change in the nightly builds between 2.x and 3.x though. The way we work on them is more or less the same, new things are added everyday and new things got broken.
To avoid unpleasant experience from 2.x nighlies we are trying to polish things internally and only then release them to the users - that's why 3.x nighlies are more for internal than external usage.
If you would like to have access to them in early stage you can drop us a line at support@chaosgroup.com and we'll take it into consideration.