Nightly Build is smaller than stable 5.0 - why?

I notice the 5.0 stable download is a few hundred MB larger than the nightly build. What is the nightly build missing?

Documentation is missing in the nightlies. For some time, we shipped nightlies without libraries as well, which cuts it down to 100MB.

1 Like

@GyrosGeier I still don’t see the reason why the nightlies include the libraries.

Also, my friend uses Ubuntu, while I use Windows and Raspberry Pi Ubuntu Mate Xenial, and both of my installations also came with the Demo files where as my friends installation did not have the Demo files.

For the nightlies, I can not see any good reason to keep downloading the exact same files over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again; which I am probably not exaggerating that I have actually downloaded the same content at least 10 times in the last year (and I can’t be the only one).

This is not my first rant on the subject of downloading again already existing files.

The devs tried it without. Users complained that it is too complicated to take care of libs for them selves. Libs got added back to the nightlies. Simple as that :wink:

I will never quite understand why MS does not have a package manager. All modern linux package managers use a diff system where you do not need to download the full package but only changes. (I choose my operating system mainly on which package manager i like most. This is why i use fedora as i find dnf to be the best one i used so far.)

1 Like

There are pros and cons in centralized package management.

What actually could be done is to modify the Windows installer so that it downloads the data only when requested.

1 Like

That is a very weak argument, in my opinion, to apply that to the nightly builds. Forcing everyone to download every thing over and over … and over, is just a waste of costly bandwidth; this is fundamentally true.

In my opinion, if one now wants to run nightly builds, they should be knowledgeable and responsible enough to manage their own libraries.

Is there possibly some underlying problem causing these opinions to be so different in user experiences?

My guess is that for most users bandwidth is free or cheap enough that they do not care.

1 Like

This has MY vote to do it that way again!

Star light, star bright,
First star I see tonight,
I wish I may, I wish I might,
Have this wish I wish tonight.

Well, I hope it works, but I don’t think my data is going to be free when I wake up in the morning.

I’m too lazy to learn to modify an NSIS installer, but if you have time you can do that. There should exist enough examples for installers which download data. Here’s the KiCad installer source: https://github.com/KiCad/kicad-winbuilder/blob/master/nsis/install.nsi. I believe they would accept reasonable pull requests.

There is such a system, it is very advanced, but also very difficult to use.

Modular MSI/MSM/MSP packages have been on my TODO list for ages, but they are really difficult to get right.

What would certainly work for us would be building multiple variants.

Yip. And the primary variant is one where the installer will optionally install a downloaded library file (or on old downloaded file already provided). When installing a new nightly the installer would pickup the local library file on your computer and install it with the nightly. One then gets to update the library files far less frequently. And did I mention I have a metered Internet service, and GB downloads do not come cheap.

1 Like

A reminder to others that you are not the only one.

This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.