Synergy Development Dead?

There are currently two main lines of Synergy development:

• The 3.2 (stable) series: runs on any version of Mac OS X from 10.2 through to 10.5.
• The 3.5 (alpha) series: feature-equivalent, but rewritten to make use of Leopard-only subsystems; runs only on version 10.5 and up.

If you look at the version history you'll see that these two lines of development take place in parallel, and that there have been interleaved releases from both branches.

Even though the 3.5 series sounds "newer", I've continued working on the 3.2 series because it's a tried-and-tested codebase. So if you put the releases in chronological order you get something like 3.1.5, 3.2, 3.5a, 3.5a2, 3.5a3, 3.5a4, 3.5a5, 3.5a6, 3.2.1b, 3.5a7, and the latest release is 3.2.1.

There are Apple bugs in Leopard, specifically the new Garbage Collection technology, that cause the 3.5 alpha series to be unstable. See ticket #640 for the full details. The basic gist is that this is an Apple bug and there is no workaround; I'm basically waiting for them to fix it.

So that's why the 3.2 line continues to be worked on. Eventually Apple will fix the bugs and future development will move forward only on the 3.5 line, but for now they're going in parallel.

That's where the MacHeist build comes in. 3.3 is not released to the public yet, but it's been prepared. It's based on the stable 3.2 codebase, not the 3.5 codebase which is affected by the Apple bugs. Like the 3.2 series before it, it is compatible with Leopard, and all versions of Mac OS X in fact back to 10.2.8.

There will most likely be a 3.2.2 release soon. Then when the MacHeist thing goes live those customers will get 3.3. When Apple fixes their Leopard bugs there'll be more releases in the 3.5 line, but until they do that I don't anticipate doing any more releases on that line; only the 3.2 (and soon 3.3) lines will see releases.

Hope that answers your question.

Just for completeness, here's a diagram showing what I was trying to explain above:

  |
  |
3.1.5
  |\
3.2 \
  |  \
  |   \
  |    \
  |     \
  |      \ <-- Leopard Garbage Collection
  |       \            rewrite
  |        \
  |         \
  |          \
  |         3.5a
  |           |
  |         3.5a2
  |           |
  |         3.5a3
  |           |
  |         3.5a4
  |           |
  |         3.5a5
  |           |
  |         3.5a6
3.2.1b        |
  |         3.5a7
3.2.1         |
  |           v
  |
  |
3.2.2 (out soon)
  |
 3.3 (MacHeist promo)
  |
  v

The MacHeist promo edition is a freebie, so there aren't any free upgrades for it. Basically, you get that particular version of the application for free; you don't get an unlimited license with free upgrades to subsequent versions.

Having said that, it's always been my intention that if any serious flaws are discovered in the code I would make a 3.3.1 release with fixes, and that release would be made available for free to MacHeist promo users.

But the codebase is pretty stable, so I doubt that any such release is going to be required...

Yes, I do have an equivalent release ready. No new features, just bug fixes and tweaks. It's actually version 3.2.2 in the diagram above; 3.3 is identical, but is a fully unlocked version for the MacHeist promo.

First I've heard of a crash. Can you please send me a crash log?

Have a look in ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter. The logs in there are named by application and date.

I should put 3.2.2 up on the servers. The main reason I haven't done so is I haven't wanted to cause confusion seeing as it's coming out after 3.3 (the MacHeist promo version).

If you want to swap in a legit version in place of the pirate one you're using I'd recommend 3.2.1. For a long time now I've been recommending the 3.2 stable series over the 3.5 alpha series because Apple is really dragging its heels on fixing bug #640. It looks like it won't be fixed in Leopard at all. Will it be fixed in Snow Leopard? I can only hope so.

Synergy 3.2.2 is now out.