Chapter 1. Getting Bluefish
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Chapter 1. Getting Bluefish

Table of Contents

1. Choosing a Version
1.1. How and When Updates are Released
1.2. Operating Systems Supported by Bluefish
2. Latest Stable Version
3. Latest Developmental Version

1. Choosing a Version

Currently, four versions of bluefish are available:

  • The GTK1-version (v0.7) is deprecated and no longer updated, but is the choice for those of you still running GTK1.
  • The latest GTK2-version (v1.0) is the version of choice for most users. It's the latest addition to the Bluefish tree, and is regarded as stable enough for daily use.
  • The latest development snapshot is always one step further than the latest stable release. You'll find some new features, bug fixes, and a prettier GUI. The catch is that it may have unfinished or buggy features. Try this if you want to see new features, or if there's a bug in the latest stable release that bothers you.
  • CVS - the bleeding edge of Bluefish development. You want this if there's a bug that bothers you, but is unfixed even in the latest snapshot, if you want to contribute a patch, or simply want the bleeding edge feature set. The CVS may be unusable for short periods of time, but will often be stable enough for daily use.

As commented in Section 1.1, “How and When Updates are Released”, the long time between stable releases makes the CVS snapshots and current CVS an enticing choice.

If you want the latest and greatest, read Section 3, “Latest Developmental Version” below. If you simply want to use Bluefish, read Section 2, “Latest Stable Version” for how to get the latest stable package that fits your system.

1.1. How and When Updates are Released

Often, a long time may pass between each release. Bluefish development is not too rapid, due to the small number of volunteer developers. After all, the developers volunteer their time and effort because they actually want to use Bluefish :-)

Because of the long periods of time between releases, the current CVS or CVS snapshots may be what you want to use. Bugs will be fixed and new features introduced. We do try to keep the CVS version usable at any time (actually, the CVS version is used by most of the development team on a daily basis).

1.2. Operating Systems Supported by Bluefish

Bluefish has been reported to work on a number of systems. The Bluefish team mainly support these platforms:

  • Mandrake Linux
  • Red Hat Linux
  • Fedora Core
  • Debian Linux
  • FreeBSD

Actually, any GNU/Linux distribution with GTK2 is fine and many distributions include Bluefish. In fact, Bluefish will likely work quite well on any POSIX compatible OS where GTK2 is available. Bluefish has been reported to work on the following:

  • NetBSD - distributed in pkgsrc
  • OpenBSD - available through their ports system
  • SGI IRIX - see http://freeware.sgi.com/
  • Mac OS X
  • Sun Solaris
  • Tru64
  • AIX
  • HP-UX
  • Win32-cygwin - with a few nags.
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