Hi all,
I'd like to announce the availability of what I'm calling the "CHIRP-next" build for the new year. If you're not aware, some of the libraries that CHIRP depends on have been orphaned such that CHIRP was a bit stuck in time for many years. Overcoming this obstacle required a lot of changes to CHIRP's core, drivers, and the GUI has had to be completely rewritten as a result. This has been a ton of work, and we still have a lot left to do.
However, it's time to rope you, the users and power users, into the effort. Several of us have tested hundreds of radios over the last few months getting ready for this, but we need your help to flesh things out. Over 90% of the radios that get used most often with CHIRP have been tested, but there are still plenty left that need to be confirmed (or fixed). Similarly, the GUI has been tested fairly well amongst the developers at this point, but there are surely still plenty of bugs to find and fix.
Ultimately, this new build will become what is today the "daily" builds, and the current version of chirp will be renamed "legacy". As of now, all new development is being done on the "next" builds and only critical bug fixes will be considered for legacy. If CHIRP-next works for you and your radios, we want you running it as soon as possible.
I've put together a page that describes in more detail why we're having to do this, how you can help, and what to look for and report:
https://chirp.danplanet.com/projects/chirp/wiki/ChirpNextBuild
Also, here's a page that describes some of the changes you can expect in the new version:
https://chirp.danplanet.com/projects/chirp/wiki/ChirpNextBuildChanges
While we're not doing this specifically to add features, the "opportunity" to redesign some things has allowed us to add some improvements. Further, being on newer dependent libraries has allowed us to add some features we never had before.
If you're on MacOS or Linux, you will almost certainly want to be running the new build immediately. It uses modern dependencies and also behaves much more like a native application on all platforms.
We really need your help testing and vetting this new version, so if you feel comfortable, please consider giving it a try and letting us know what you run into. I'm getting the word out here to the users groups a little early, before we start offering it on the download page specifically. Feel free to forward this to your own groups, facebook pages, etc to get more visibility than just the users here.
You can find the CHIRP-next builds here:
https://trac.chirp.danplanet.com/download?stream=next
As always, you'll want to stay up-to-date with these, as things have been moving fast!
--Dan