I see that with the release of Local 5.2.1, that Local is out of beta - great! But I also see that there’s a version 5.2.1 of Local Beta.
If the version numbers are the same, does that mean that they are the same app, or is Local Beta 5.2.1 an older, beta, release of Local 5.2.1, or is it Local 5.2.1 with new beta features added…?
I don’t mind, but it would be really helpful to have this explained somewhere.
And now that I have both installed, it seems that sites on each are separate. Is there any way to have them use the same set of sites?.. otherwise going back and forth between beta and release versions becomes a pain.
Aside from the confusion I’m really happy to see this release and looking forward to ongoing improvements!
Thanks for stopping by again. Here is a nice thought out post from @clay with a tldr at the end explaining some reasoning behind naming and tech decisions.
Local Lightning is the future of Local for three primary reasons: more accessible installation, performance, and stability.
However, in this (albeit a few moths old post) @flyjack states that Local Lightning is deprecated - “no longer supported or maintained”.
And neither of those posts help me understand what to expect the difference between Local 5.2.1 and Local Beta 5.2.1 would be.
I don’t mind at all what terminology you use, and I think that Local is great… it would just be a big help to understand what’s what so I can make an informed choice about what tool(s) to use in different circumstances, and for terminology to be consistent going forward.
Just my understanding, but I believe both Local and Local Beta 5.2.1 are essentially the same. Local is the release version of the app and Local Beta is the beta app.
To me this means continuing active development of the application with a beta user group, while releasing the stable version.
@afragen is correct. Local 5.2.1 and Local Beta 5.2.1 are the same releases, just with different names.
Since we promise always to make sure Local Beta has the latest (stable should never be ahead of Local Beta), we simultaneously released 5.2.1 to both Local and Local Beta.
There are a lot of moving parts under the hood, so having both Local and Local Beta work with the same sites would likely cause stability issues. Especially with site configs and databases.
We’re looking into the possibility of building a migrator between Local and Local Beta, but it’s not high on the priority list at this time since exporting and importing is a reasonably painless process.
Please let me know if I can help clarify things any further!
A bit confused myself. Tried Local 5.2.1 and Local Beta 5.2.1. I see in your screenshot in the sticky Local 5.2.1 release post that you have the menu item for add-ons. In Local 5.2.1 I don’t see add-ons, in local beta 5.2.1 I see add-ons.
Sorry for the confusion there! That was an asset I pulled from the website and I missed the fact that the image includes the Add-ons icon.
Since most Add-ons are not upgraded to work with Local 5 yet, we have kept the Add-ons tab to only Local Beta for now. Now that Custom Environments are back and Connect to WP Engine is mostly complete, we will be shifting our focus back to Add-ons soon!
A migrator would be nice but, on reflection, if it’s a choice between that and pushing forward what Local can do, it’s not such a big deal to move sites.
