MacOS alpha

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Introduction

So you have been (t)asked to participate in testing the Inkscape 1.0 alpha for macOS and you are willing to embark on this endeavor - great! Let me first thank you for your interest and give you "the tour" about what's up ahead.

out with the old, in with the new

Testing the 1.0 alpha for macOS will probably be a bit different from what you might expect: although Inkscape has been around for years and there have been official releases for macOS in the past, this app has undergone a lot more changes than "only" the leap from 0.9x codebase to 1.0 would lead you to think. It uses an entirely new build system (rebuilt from scratch and still being worked on) and that proves to be an additional source introducing issues and regressions until it's matured. So in addition to probably new/changed/broken/... functionalities originating from the 1.0 codebase, there will be a lot of macOS-specific issues in Inkscape that none of the releases for the other platforms have. And these issues might be even of foundational nature; in fact, so foundational that you'd never expect them to surface in an app that already has years of development under its belt. To give you two examples, we've already had and fixed Inkscape crashing on opening/saving files as well as a broken text tool, accompanied by missing fonts and texts in a drawing... I know that sounds bad and I know testing is not all fun and games, but we have to push through this once (and only once!), so please don't let that scare you off!

Testing

There are many ways to approach this and you are free to do what you like (and we encourage you to do so), but let me give you two possibilities in case you are unsure how to get started.

• Use Inkscape 1.0 alpha as if it was the final release. Do your drawings and what you regularly do, but use the alpha version for it. This way you will notice if something is different/broken/slower/... than you are used to because you are in familiar territory. But don't forget that this release is not production-ready, so save your work more often to not have your day ruined if something unexpected happens.
• Just play around. Do things for fun, click through all the menus, go search for things that are new or that you have never used before. Make a copy of your most complex drawing you have ever done and open that copy in Inkscape alpha. Does it look like you would expect?

early testing group

If you are part of the early testing group (you know if you are because you'll have been told), you are now crew members of the starship Enterprise: "to boldly go where noone has gone before". The releases you are about to test have not undergone any previous testing besides "draw a circle, a rectangle, add some text, save file". So not only are you probably going to see more bugs, you'll also (hopefully) encounter all the remaining foundational issues that would make Picard do the facepalm. For example, nobody has tested if printing still works. And these are the things we need to find out and fix before we announce any kind of public testing, or else we would get swamped with issues and complaints. Do not let it discourage you if you find major issues like that, it is important that you do. So be brave, put on your red shirt and join the away team! (Enough with the Star Trek references already!)

regular testing group

If you are part of the regular testing group (you know if you are because you have not been told to put on a red shirt...), some brave men and women have sacrificed their sanity already been testing the alpha releases before you. That does not mean that you won't find any bugs, but hopefully there won't be any major blockers left that would stop you from testing after 5 minutes. But still, no guarantees.

Downloading

You can access and download the alpha builds directly from the CI pipeline. To do that, first go to https://gitlab.com/inkscape/inkscape. On the sidebar on the left you'll find a small rocket icon to access the CI /CD menu. Click on that and select Pipelines.

Now choose the latest pipeline from the master branch (unless otherwise instructed). Take note of the version information besides the branch name, 5f7a1b48 in this example.

Click on the download icon to the right to access the artifacts it has produced. Select the Inkscape:mac artifact to download. (There are different kinds of build pipelines, not all of them produce a Inkscape:mac artifact.)

This will download a file named artifacts.zip to your computer. It includes build/artifacts/Inkscape.app. If you quicklook on the app you can confirm the version information.