For the record, i’m not bashing on the everyone taking the time and effort making these builds and make them available. I’m just asking this for clarity.
I’m having a look at these daily builds on Graphicall and Zoo-Logique, and i’m wondering about the purpose of these builds. Are they made available for serious testing or just previews to tinker around with?
If they are for serious testing (and indeed, these are the builds the Durian project is using right now to work), I have to wonder how you actually can do something in the current 2.5 builds, because their behaviour is so erratic and things differ with every build, for me it’s hard to distinguish between a genuine bug or something that isn’t quite there yet.
I can’t tell if a) something is genuinly broke, b) working as intended, but changed from 2.49 behaviour or c) something simply isn’t there.
I know 2.5 in it’s current state is simply not meant for serious work, but at the moment to me it doesn’t even look ready enough for testing purposes.
Official testing builds will be available in a month or two. I think that’s what you are wanting / expecting. They should not have any intentionally ‘broken’ behavior. They also should be on blender.org.
The current builds are there for people to tinker with if they like, and to help bug-hunt if used correctly. See this page for some info on what does and doesn’t work. Generally, don’t worry if something is missing or moved, but if it’s broken (blender crashes, locks up, etc), then you can let someone know.
Those builds really are glimpses at a(n awesome) work in progress!
PS: I wouldn’t use them for really serious work quite yet!