Current development version stability

[isolated-matrix]

Hi there,

I have been waiting for v2.8.0 to release for a while (ever since I saw that it was going to include support for elements from the periodic table), but it is taking a lot longer than planned (which is fair enough—I'm not accusing the developers of negligence!) and I would like to use those features sooner rather than later.

I was just wondering if the current development version of MDA is stable enough to run without crashing? I ask because I assume there were some unforeseen problems that have delayed the official release, but I do not know whether these are fatal or are just tweaks that need to be made before release.

[IAlibay]

@isolated-matrix we are currently in the process of releasing 2.8.0, probably at some point this week. The delay is purely down to lack of time.

[isolated-matrix]

I perfectly understand—things always come up, and programming can be particularly painful and time-consuming (at least, in my limited experience). I don't want to come across as being pushy, impatient, or self entitled in any way, I just wanted to check whether installing the development version would be likely to give me results faster or not.

[orbeckst]

By now, 2.8.0 has been out for a week ;-), see https://www.mdanalysis.org/2024/11/22/release-2.8.0/

To answer your original question: develop is supposed to be stable and usable but we will never officially recommend you using it because we may have to change things at short notice during development (or even undo changes) and for reproducible science you want to be able to give specific versions of software used.