FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

When mistakes appear, people using the daily ppa need to wait until the next build including the fix is available if they updated their minetest, i.e. they can't play minetest right until tomorrow.
Using a self compiled version is annoying because you always need to compile it yourself, which takes time,
and the current stable release is fairly outdated, some mods (pipeworks) wouldn't work.

Joining a (local) server doesn't work now so l need to wait for the next build for the ppa…

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying, Hybrid Dog. However, if you're telling us that the bleeding-edge build breaks a lot, that's no news to me. I run Debian stable specifically so I won't have the latest versions of any random program.

For things like minetest, where I want more recent software, I sometimes compile it to my user directory and run it from there (rather than installing it system-wide). I never download the newest automatically, because I want to test every new version I get to make sure it works before I trash the old version.

Debian calls new software "unstable" for a reason -- new software is not, and never will be, reliable. If you use it, you're part of the beta team, whatever the developers may say.

I guess I know what he talks about. Recently, I broke the feature to connect to servers, and then fixed it some time later after there was a bug report. The launchpad build service is set up to build daily, most times that's not a big problem as just rather unimportant stuff gets commited. But sometimes there is a major breakage, like recently with engine bug #3498, and people have to endure the bug for up to 24 hours even though its fixed.

Usually when I fix such a major regression I always press the launchpad "Request build" button, but sometimes I forget, or I am not the one who's fixing.

Ruining minetest fun for one day of the daily repo should be avoided imo, so I encourage other devs who pushed important fixes upstream to:

1. log in to launchpad (if you don't have a launchpad account or are not in this list then you can't do it of course: https://launchpad.net/~minetestdevs/+members)
2. browse to https://code.launchpad.net/~minetestdev ... 5/upstream
3. click the "Import now" button
4. wait until the import is done (few minutes), press f5 from time to time until you see the commit you want in the "Recent revisions" list
5. browse to https://code.launchpad.net/~minetestdev ... test-daily
6. click the green "Request build(s)" link
7. click the request build(s) button in the dialog
8. If you want to provide the update for precise users too: browse to https://code.launchpad.net/~minetestdev ... ily-legacy and repeat 3-7.

l would like a request build button at minetest.net which everyone can press and if there's a new commit a new build appears.

When I update minetest I download from github and compile. I always keep my older version.
I know that the daily is a beta. I expect issues. I am actually surprised that there are not more issues.

One issue I see is that mod devs will update their mods to work with the daily and not clearly state that the daily build is needed. Mods should state in the OP what version of MT is needed. If a mod is updated then the old version should be linked in the OP so that people who use the stable version of MT can easily get the right version.