Aladdin Ghostscript developer and beta filesets

If you have already read this document and just want to get the most recent developer / beta fileset, you can always find it on:

• http://download.sourceforge.net/ghostscript (U.S.A., primary site)
• ftp://mirror.cs.wisc.edu/pub/mirrors/ghost/AFPL/test/ (central U.S.A., second primary site)
• ftp://ftp.dante.de/tex-archive/support/ghostscript/AFPL/test/ (Germany)
• ftp://elza.lpi.ru/pub/ghost/AFPL/test/ (Russia)
• ftp://munnari.oz.au/ghost/ (Australia)

The most valuable thing you can do to help improve Ghostscript is to help test it. There are four different grades of filesets available, each of which needs a different kind of testing. In order of decreasing maturity:

• Stable releases are made available about every 9 months, after a beta test period.

• Beta releases are posted starting about 6 weeks before a planned stable release. These are candidates for a stable release, and need intensive testing.

• Developer filesets are posted every few weeks. These are not supposed to be good enough for general use, but testing them is still very helpful, since it gets problems corrected before the intensive beta test period.

• The CVS repository contains the current code under development. In the discussion below, we include this code under "developer filesets". It is even less stable than (numbered) developer filesets, but it also often includes minor bug fixes that haven't been included in a fileset yet.

You can always find all of the current releases and filesets through http://sourceforge.net/projects/ghostscript/. For information about the CVS repository and obtaining code please visit http://cvs.ghostscript.com/.

If you test Ghostscript, please always report problems by using the problem reporting form cvs/Bug-form.htm that is included with Ghostscript. It saves a lot of time and e-mail if we can get all the necessary information right away. Please read the problem reporting form carefully, and follow its instructions about where to send the report and what to include in the report.

If you would like to be notified when new developer or beta filesets are posted, please fill out the short questionnaire on the file cvs/Tester.htm that is included with Ghostscript, and e-mail the result to gs-test-request at aladdin.com.

Note that developer and beta filesets differ from stable releases in certain ways other than schedule:

• Developer and beta filesets may be distributed only in source code form, unlike public releases which include pre-compiled PC and Mac executables. If you want to work with these filesets on PC or Mac platforms, you will need one of the compilers that Ghostscript is prepared to work with (Borland, Microsoft, or Watcom on the PC platform; MetroWerks on the Mac). For all other platforms, we recommend gcc, although Ghostscript should build with any standard C compiler.

• Developer and beta filesets do not include the freely available libraries that Ghostscript uses. See below for information about how to get these.

• Developer filesets often include significant features that are not yet in public releases: for example, a nearly complete implementation of PostScript LanguageLevel 3 was available in a developer fileset in February 1999, over 6 months before a public release.

• New header files and APIs in developer filesets are generally less stable than those in public releases.

• Developer and beta filesets identify themselves as such when they are started. This is so that users understand what kind of code they have and what quality they should expect.

• Developer and beta filesets are distributed only with the Aladdin Free Public License, unlike public releases which are eventually distributed with the GNU General Public License and are also made available for commercial licensing.

• We are happy to have public releases distributed freely (subject to the Aladdin or GNU License that accompanies the software), and there are newsgroups such as gnu.ghostscript.bug where users can share information and ask for help. Although we make developer and beta filesets available for testing with the Aladdin License, which does allow redistribution, we would really prefer it if you don't redistribute them outside your own organization. If you do want to do so, please distribute only exact copies of them, and not derived versions like RPMs. Also, please do not post questions about these filesets to newsgroups.

Developer and beta filesets do not include the IJG JPEG library, the PNG library, or the zlib library. The most recent released versions of these libraries are always available from the following places:

• IJG JPEG library:

  	ftp://ftp.uu.net/graphics/jpeg/jpegsrc.v*.tar.gz
  

• PNG library:

  	ftp://swrinde.nde.swri.edu/pub/png/src/libpng-*.tar.gz or lpng*.zip
  

• zlib:

  	ftp://ftp.uu.net/pub/archiving/zip/zlib/zlib-*.tar.gz or zlib*.zip.
  

Possibly slightly out-of-date copies of these libraries are also available from ftp://mirror.cs.wisc.edu/pub/mirrors/ghost/3rdparty/.