Alpha versions for Linux now available!

November 4, 2019

Hi everyone!

I am super excited to announce that VGC alpha versions are now available for Linux! They are packaged in the form of an AppImage. If you're new to AppImages, all you have to do is download the AppImage, make it executable, and run it:

chmod u+x vgcillustration*.AppImage
./vgcillustration*.AppImage

Let me know if you have any problems running the AppImage! The best is to report bugs on GitHub, but you can simply make a comment on Discord or by email, that works too :-)

In conclusion, great news: VGC alpha versions are now available for download on all three major desktop platforms: Windows, macOS, and Linux! :-)

It was a long and bumpy road to get there, and all platforms had their share of challenges and annoyances. Compared to VPaint, what was the most challenging was migrating from using AdvancedInstaller to using WixToolset (the latter is open source and better suited for automation), signing the installers, deploying Python as part of the install process (VPaint doesn't have a Python console), and of course, having all of this fully automated (while for VPaint all the packages have to be manually created for each release). Also, it took a long time to implement the VGC website with a login/sponsor system and automatic deployment of installers from GitHub to the VGC website. Oh, and the macOS installers required me to buy a new Macbook because my old one didn't support the latest versions of macOS...

But now, all of this is done! This means that I will soon be able to go back to actually implement features. However, there is still one more thing to do beforehand: release VPaint 1.7, which means fixing a few remaining bugs, and update the information displayed on the "About VPaint" dialog, so that it informs users about the VGC project, and allow them to subscribe for a VGC account, rather than subscribe to the VPaint mailing list (which I will close).

Note that creating the VGC website and automating the generation of installers took way longer than I expected, and to be honest it pretty much delayed the project by one full year. So it's very unlikely that the first stable version will be ready by July 2020. I'll give you more details on an updated timeline soon. However, the good news is that the frustration caused by a delay in the release of VGC might be somewhat compensated by the fact that now, each new feature that I implement will be instantly available to you on the VGC website :-)

Thank you so much for your patience and your continuing support!

Cheers,

Boris