On 11/22/20 10:15 PM Rob McDonald wrote:

Some of my users are reporting problems with MacOS Big Sur.  It looks like these have been addressed with some of the recent work by Manolo and the team.

I am currently using 1.3.5 with no patches.  I'd prefer to stick with a stable version in general as it makes everyone's life a bit easier.

Article #1611 <https://www.fltk.org/articles.php?L1611> says that 1.3.X is still receiving MacOS related fixes, but other comments indicate that it is pretty stagnant.

I'd like to release 1.3.6 maybe this year or at the beginning of 2021. I'm currently working on backporting some CMake modifications, particularly addressing Windows DLL builds but also other stuff. This should definitely go into 1.3.6.

We have 26 commits in branch-1.3 since the release of 1.3.5. Many of these commits are related to macOS.

I can't speak for Manolo, but since the new Apple M1 processor is available there may be some necessary fixes for macOS as well (or not, who knows?).

All that could likely be achieved during the next weeks/months so that we can hopefully release 1.3.6 as I wrote above. There's no defined plan or schedule however yet.

1.4.X seems to have no particular path to a .0 release.  I am reluctant to grab master on a random day as you never know if that will relatively stable or in the middle of a mess.

You could pick a version that "looks good" (read the commit logs) and watch the further development. Then test this version with your application(s) and watch for further commits that may be relevant to you or fix issues you see when testing. If everything is fine, use this release for production code.

So, what is the current recommendation?  Use the tip of branch-1.3?  Use the tip of master?  Use some random SHA version that is known to be 'pretty good'?

The tip of 1.3 should be pretty stable as there are no new features but there are also fixes that may have introduced new bugs. Probably not much though but there have been no release candidates and hence no wide testing. If you can wait until the beginning of 2021 chances are that there will be a 1.3.6 release with one or more RC's.

Is there an uncharted plan for 1.4.0?  1.3.5 was 20+ months ago

My opinion is that 1.4.0 still needs some improvements and I'm working on some of them. Before we release 1.4.0 there should also be a thorough code review and there are some "FIXME" comments that should be reviewed and maybe fixed. It's still in progress.

That said, I'd suggest to start with the tip of branch-1.3, test your app (as if this was a RC) and wait for upcoming changes for CMake and macOS and then for release 1.3.6.

I would also give git master (1.4.x) a go to see if this works for you. The code is really mostly API compatible and the few differences can be made compatible, for instance using the correct include files. Both versions are slightly different in their requirements but if you include the *correct* headers everything should be fine with both versions (no need to #ifdef ...). I intend to improve the docs with hints what to do. If you find any regressions you're invited to report these in fltk.coredev. TIA.