Factory Instructions

Factory Rationale

You have probably come here because you want to test a Nuitka change made for you on factory branch or its Nuitka Commercial counterpart, the staging branch.

Both the main and develop branches of Nuitka should always be working correctly. For experiments in the context of issues and new features not yet ready for prime time, we use the factory branch.

The staging branch of Nuitka Commercial is generally only updated when factory can be assumed to be relatively good, but also when commercial users get asked to test corrections, so tread with caution there as well.

How do you get factory or staging?

git

# Standard version:
git clone --branch factory https://github.com/Nuitka/Nuitka.git
# Commercial version (subscribers only)
git clone --branch staging https://github.com/Nuitka/Nuitka-commercial.git

Either run bin/nuitka from the checkout, and it will use the Nuitka code right next to it, or run python setup.py develop``to create a ``.pth file that works like a symlink. That means if you update the git, Nuitka is automatically updated in your environment, too.

Of course python setup.py install also works, but copies Nuitka into the environment and needs to be redone for every git update.

pip

# With "python" being the version where you want to install Nuitka

# Standard version:
python -m pip install -U --force-reinstall "https://github.com/Nuitka/Nuitka/archive/factory.zip"
# Commercial version (subscribers only)
python -m pip install -U --force-reinstall "https://github.com/Nuitka/Nuitka-commercial/archive/staging.zip"

When is it released?

When the factory branch is stable and about one week old, it’s time to release a new hotfix; we then distribute its contents to main and develop branches depending on suitability. They become part of the hotfix or the new pre-release at that point.

Usually, there is a new hotfix every one or two weeks. But before a new Nuitka release comes out, they might stop for a while, as with the next release being so close wouldn’t matter much.

For invasive fixes that are critical, they can become release triggers, certainly, if Nuitka Commercial customers with priority support are affected.

Subscribing to Nuitka Commercial

You may also learn more about Nuitka Commercial offering.

If you want to have better protection of your IP or just more robust updates sooner, then you can purchase Nuitka Commercial. You, of course, also reward the responsive support given.

Word of Warning

The factory branch of Nuitka may include all kinds of stupid mistakes; for example, not being executable with all Python versions, crashing and not working at all.

They also frequently change without notice and nearly always as a git rebase. So please use it only for the issue at hand or even more than usual at your own risk.

Once confirmed and found suitable, fixes will typically appear on develop or main branch relatively shortly, so try to use those instead once possible. To keep using factory is asking for trouble, and it may have issues you have not noticed yet.

The recommendation about the staging branch of Nuitka Commercial is slightly less strict, but it’s best to treat it the same, even if with the best efforts to keep it more stable, there will be mistakes.