[Ardour-Dev] the opening of 3.0

[Paul Davis]

As of today, November 7th, version 3.0 of Ardour is considered open
for what should best be called "pre-alpha" testing. Let me spell out
precisely what I consider this to mean:

   * you must know what you're doing - its only available via SVN. do
not ask for help with the build unless you are sure that you've done
right thing and it is broken.
   * please: do not ask for a tarball, and do not distribute one
   * please: do not even think about building packages of this for any
distribution. no, really. ABSOLUTELY NO PACKAGES. NONE. NADA. ZERO.
NULL. DO NOT DO IT.
   * feel free to report problems with the build process. this mailing
list or IRC are probably best. i will attempt fix them ASAP.
Suggestions on improving the build process are welcome.
   * feel free to report actual bugs  in mantis.
   * please be sure to use "SVN 3.0" as the product version in mantis
when reporting bugs
   * the session file format will not be "cast in stone" till we hit
beta status, so DO NOT DO ANYTHING MEANINGFUL  OR IMPORTANT with this
version
   * future versions may refuse to load any sessions you create
between now and beta status
   * the current version may destroy data that it records, on a whim.
DO NOT DO ANYTHING MEANINGFUL OR IMPORTANT with this version

The purpose of opening it up is to try to collect more input from more
"pre-alpha" testers about the build process, obvious glaring bugs
(functionality from 2.X that is now broken will be given very high
priority) and to collect initial feedback about the implementation of
MIDI. I am looking for feedback on opening 2.X sessions too. This will
work, with some things not being handled correctly or at all. Ardour3
will save a copy of the 2.X version in, paradoxically,
/path/to/session/session-1.ardour (yes, thats a bug too).

If you decide to try it out, please subscribe to the ardour-cvs
mailing list (info @ http://ardour.org/support), and keep your eyes on
commits as they happen. There will be periods of intense activity, and
you should plan on updating your checkout regularly as this happens,
as in general, it means bug fixes.

This announcement is being made ONLY to this mailing list. Please do
not distribute.

Oh, and finally, in case it wasn't clear enough, DO NOT DO ANYTHING
MEANINGFUL OR IMPORTANT with this version of  Ardour.

It only gets better from here, right?

regards,
--p