No nightly builds of 2.2.x branch for Macs since September

[yetisyny]

There have been no nightly builds of the 2.2.x branch for Macs since September 14, when the most recent nightlies of both VLC Media Player and the VLC NPAPI plugin for macOS were both compiled and posted on the nightlies page at https://nightlies.videolan.org/build/macosx-intel/.

I would very very much like new nightlies based off the current 2.2.x branch code (post-2.2.6, pre-2.2.7). As far as I am aware, the current branch code has fixes for .ASS subtitle display and macOS 10.13 High Sierra compatibility compared to the 2.2.6 stable release, and I would like to be able to try it out. Yes, there are 3.0.0 trunk nightlies but those are not what I am interested in currently, I am trying to see if there is a version of VLC Media Player for macOS that works as well as version 2.2.4 did, including the bugfixes for more recent versions but also fixes for regressions introduced since 2.2.4 which affect playback of certain videos. According to what I have found from the bug trackers and changelogs, the current code, if compiled into a nightly build, would probably solve the problems I have with versions 2.2.5, 2.2.5.1, 2.2.6, as well as the 2.2.x nightlies from September and earlier, as the relevant bugfixes were done in October meaning the current 2.2.x code on Git ought to work really great if someone would just compile it.

If someone could just compile and build .app packages of the current source code of the 2.2.x branch and upload them to the nightlies website so I could test them out I would be really happy. I do not know how to compile and build the source code into an actual working .app for macOS myself. There has not been a new 2.2.x branch nightly build for macOS released on the nightlies page since September 14 and I would like to test out bugfixes that, according to the bug trackers and changelogs, have been fixed since then. If anyone could start compiling these 2.2.x nightlies again it would just be awesome. Thank you so much.

[dfuhrmann]

Unfortunatly automatic nightly build are not working anymore on the 2.2 branch (and there is no intent to fix that as 3.0 is more important right now).

However, 2.2.7 will be released very soon now, and I can provide a test build here once created.

Update: You can find a release candidate build for 2.2.7 here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/st4qv1shgnft0 ... 7.dmg?dl=0. Any feedback is welcome.

[yetisyny]

Awesome!! I tried your release candidate and it works great, the subtitle issue is fixed! Thanks a lot! Now I can upgrade from version 2.2.4 to this 2.2.7 release candidate and the .ASS subtitles in my .MKV videos all work! I just tested it. Very good job fixing things since the September 14th nightly build, this build is quite stable and works very well for me, at least on macOS 10.12.6 Sierra.

I do not have macOS 10.13 High Sierra installed yet, too much software is incompatible with it, maybe somebody else can tell you whether it is compatible with High Sierra or not, I do not want to upgrade to High Sierra until all my software works on it. But the subtitle issue, totally nailed it, awesome. Thank you very much for the test build, I suggest uploading this release candidate to the nightlies website so other people can try it, it works very well.

[dfuhrmann]

Thanks for the feedback. No problem if you cannot test on 10.13 yet, others (including me) can. So far, I do not see problems on 10.13 either.

[yetisyny]

I noticed a minor issue on this 2.2.7 release candidate.

It seems if I change any of the preferences in the Preferences menu, for instance switching between Bright and Dark interface style or changing Language for user interface, the change does not occur until the program has been exited and restarted. In prior versions, I believe such changes in Preferences would happen immediately after hitting Save on the dialog box without needing to exit and restart the program. Or in some cases, changes to certain preferences would not happen until after playback of the current video ended, but stopping playback and starting it would apply the new settings without having to restart the program. Now it seems exiting and restarting the program is necessary to apply new settings. It is not that big of a deal, just a minor annoyance.

I did not notice this at first because I already had all of the settings just the way I wanted them. But, I tested things a bit more and found this.

It is possible that you did this change intentionally in order to improve stability since it is not a release build. So I do not know if this is really a bug or intentional behavior.

Besides that, everything else seems to work fine.

[dfuhrmann]

No, this is no new bug, this behaviour has always been like this, even in previous releases.

VLC has lots of settings and by architecture, some setting only get applied if you restart the corresponding module (either by restarting the whole program, or by stopping and playing again, or by other means). It would be very hard to implement instant changes for all settings.

[yetisyny]

There is now an official release version 2.2.8 of VLC Media Player out, not on the main website yet, but you can get it off the official VLC download site here: http://download.videolan.org/pub/videolan/vlc/ (just browse down to 2.2.8, which should be the highest version number right now) There was also briefly an official release 2.2.7 version but a bugfix was put out and version 2.2.8 is the latest official release version now. It seems version 2.2.7 had a major bug with .AVI files that was quickly fixed so version 2.2.8 is the one to use.

I have done some very brief testing of the 2.2.8 official release on videos that have .ASS subtitles which versions 2.2.5 thru 2.2.6 for macOS cannot display correctly, and it works perfectly for subtitle display on macOS. It also has the High Sierra compatibility issues fixed according to the changelog but I have not tested this myself personally. Happy downloading! Version 2.2.6 is still the one on the main website, but you can try the latest version 2.2.8 out, I have not had any problems at all so far but version 2.2.8 came out earlier today, not enough time for thorough testing.

I linked to the download site that has all the versions instead of to the 2.2.8 specific version just in case a newer version comes out, that way you will see the newer version at the above link too.