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Does the traditional versioned release cycle still make sense for DOSBox?

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First post, by lowe0

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Before I begin: I'm carefully writing this to not make it a "is DOSBox dead?" or "where's 0.75?" post. For the sake of not getting it locked, please consider the same when replying.

Is a traditional release cycle still the best use of the DOSBox developers' time and effort?

Right now, think of the many ways you can get DOSBox. There's the original download from the website, of course, but there's also:

  • bundled as part of a GOG, Steam, or EA release
  • on Linux, via your distribution's package repository
  • as a core for pluggable emulators (libretro or similar)
  • from your preferred fork (DOSBox-X, etc.)
  • built from source

It looks to me like there are already plenty of ways for SVN commits newer than 0.74.x to get into end users' hands. GOG has always had the option of cherry-picking whatever's best for each individual game. Package managers can pull in from SVN whenever they like, in accordance with their distribution's philosophy (less often for Debian, more often for Arch, etc.). And forks are gonna do whatever they want within the terms of the license.

Would it make more sense to develop DOSBox as a reference implementation, and let others deal with the release process?

Reply 1 of 1, by DosFreak

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Your questions would best be asked of the DOSBox devs instead of the peanut gallery.

Windows releases for any application aren't much of an issue but native linux releases are due to Linux user mode piss poor compatibility which is why flatpak, snap etc are a thing for those that bother to release for Linux.
Maintainers of packages for the most part throw their hands up and go with those.
IIRC, DOSBox itself releases binaries for Windows and macOS. Linux, OS/2, etc rely on the maintainers.

The issue with Game stores is they are lazy and rely on the publishers who are lazy and use old versions. They don't bother to grab the lastest release or *gasp* compile the latest version themselves. They just want a quick buck.
Whatever forks do isn't an issue for DOSBox as long as they comply with the GPL.

It's a reference already, since that's how the forks work. It's just that it's always been the case that different groups have different goals. Some features may be beneficial to "upsteam" or most forks, some may not.

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