alt Hacker NewsAre snapshots explicitly a beta channel? Or do users get auto updates to them? Testing for bugs in prod shouldn’t be acceptable unless users expect bugs in exchange for getting latest features early in something like a beta channel
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They are explicitly a beta channel, and in fact if you create a world on a snapshot you don't have an upgrade path to future releases (unless you start hacking at your world files with an NBT editor). So most of the community ignores them and waits till release.
They're previews of what they're working on and what they're going to add to the next version. You don't get auto updated to them, you have to select them in the launcher.
As you would expect from the word "snapshot" contrasted up against the word "release", might I add.
they're not useful to users looking for the latest features. They're useful to mod developers who'd like to see how internal changes might affect their work. For example.
Minecraft snapshots are beta. A default installation of the Minecraft launcher will not download and install snapshots.
You have to opt-in to it.
Snapshots are only for testing. They are sometimes not forwards-compatible.
Snapshots are the weekly (at least they used to be, I think they're less frequent now) development snapshots - they are explicitly pre-beta versions that you have to opt in to.