Beta vs alpha vs gamma and why to switch?

I’ve been using vvvv for a few years, but still not pretty sure about versions!!

i try to use updated 64x beta all the time, but my question would be maybe for devvvvs? when to use alpha or gamma ? or maybe the question could be it does have sense keep using x64 beta ?

i don’t code too much, i use mostly graphics and projection with simple interaction patches.

thanks

hey alex,

Alphas are development versions that contain new features that did mot make it in beta yet, but are considered not stable enough for production. You can use them if you wanna test a new feature that’s being developed but not finished yet.

Gamma on the other hand is a version of vvvv that only comes with the VL programming language (meaning no “classic vvvv” at all). Right now it’s in preview state, which means that it’s not stable enough to be used for production.

Check out this post that goes into details about what is gamma versus beta, and this one that gives updates on gamma’s development until it reaches a stable state.

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@sebscudie thanks for your answer , i think i understand more or less this context of stable vs non stable, but if i explain this in a practical way to some non VVVV lover , this would be a very abstract answer .

maybe ther’s some specific and general topics that are interesting to show in alpha better than in betta ? this is a question to try to give a more solid answer to people even more newbee tan me !! thanks

Well, basically it means that new functionalities that will be available in beta stays in alpha as long as it’s not finished.
Then, a new version of beta is released with all the new shiny stuff that were tested and improved in alpha versions.

These days, dev is more oriented towards the VL programming language, that is also included in beta (see the posts I linked above). So if you wanna test some new features of VL, you should use alpha, or gamma if you don’t need vvvv beta at all.

yes , I guess it’s pretty clear , thanks

I was thinking about this , and I just want to complement my question to know if there’s some difference between the beta and alpha core of VVVV or it’s just things added in alpha and why you can’t open alpha in beta ? the development of VL stuff in alpha it goes just for beta or is also part of gamma development ?

let me try again: basically there are “vvvv beta” and “vvvv gamma”. both of which include vl. depending on release dates beta and gamma can include different versions of vl, but eventually they’ll always be the same.

then there is “vvvv alpha” which is always a preview of the upcoming “vvvv beta”. if there are any notable changes in an alpha (over the previous beta) we usually document them in the change log even before a beta release.

assuming you mean “open a patch saved in current alpha, with previous beta”: mostly this should actually work, but sometimes we have to make changes that make it impossible to still allow this that is why we put the warning on the alpha download page.

Okok, I was confused because I had some saved patches that now have a lot of red nodes in audio , I found some contributions and documentation to solve it , but also It seems I was with old solutions compared to gamma , so i Was not sure if I should keep working old stuff, try some alpha or just switch to gamma because for real it’s a better solutions, but with the inconvenience to repatch almost all. Thanks @joreg I think I will keep trying to find the best solution in beta .

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