[orca-list] Orca 3.29.3 hopefully coming to an unstable distro near you

[Joanmarie Diggs <jdiggs igalia com>]

Hey all.

Today I did an unstable (v3.29.3) release of Orca. With any luck,
distros which maintain repos with upcoming versions of packages like
Orca will include it. This will make it possible for people who are
comfortable installing software from packages, but perhaps lack
familiarity and comfort using git and/or building and installing
software from source, to test much of what is in Orca master.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe another option for folks who want
to have Orca master from the safety and convenience of a package
manager, is to use Arch as your distro. I don't know the details, so
hopefully Arch users can help out others who want to pursue this route.

Lastly, long-time members of this list might have noticed that I tend to
say things like "please test master" but then leave it to others to
explain how to go about doing it. There are a couple of reasons for
this: For one thing, others on this list have this knowledge. And
leaving the explaining to them frees me up to work on things like
improving Orca. So many thanks to all of the explainers!! :)

That said, the other reason I refrain from answering these sorts of
questions is this: It's not too hard to screw up your system, causing
Orca to not work as expected -- or at all -- when building and
installing Orca along with its dependencies from source. It probably
won't happen. But if I were to give you instructions, and you were to
break something badly enough to make your system inaccessible to you, I
not only would feel awful -- I also might not be able to help you from
here due to lack of time and lack of familiarity with your particular
distro or set up.

So.... I encourage -- and greatly appreciate -- testing of master for
those who have the skills needed. I encourage community members with
copious spare time to support each other in doing this testing. But I
hope no one minds if I focus on improving Orca while you all test and
support each other.

Thank you for your understanding!
--joanie