The wait for PrusaSlicer 3.0.0 continues, but it may not be for much longer.
An update on the PrusaSlicer GitHub page suggested that it could be only a month before we see one of the biggest upgrades in slicing tech in years.
They write:
“Many of you know that we are working on a bigger release (PrusaSlicer 3.0.0), and you are probably eager to get your hands on it. We are sorry to keep you waiting, and we admit that the work is taking longer than expected. There is a massive amount of technical debt that we need to get rid of to allow future maintenance of the application. We are now fully focused on that, along with developing new features.
We are also sorry that we are not very active in our GitHub issue tracker lately— for the same reason. We plan to get back to it when the new slicer is released and make things right again. We hope that the work we are doing now will allow us to release more frequently in the future and get back in touch with our community.
At this stage, we can confidently say that the 3.x groundwork is well in place, and most features are ported. We are currently finalizing the UI and bug-fixing. The time to release it now counts in weeks (although there may be more than four). The previous time estimates we worked with internally proved not very accurate, so we will rather not be more specific now.”
This is very good news. The removal of the technical debt may require some explanation, though.
Technical debt is an information technology term that refers to an accumulation of old, flaky code. This type of code typically makes adding new features or even fixing problems more difficult, slowing down progress. It accumulates over time because of a cascade of small decisions and shortcuts. But eventually, the debt must be paid, and that’s what Prusa Research is doing here: rewriting substantial portions of the code up to new standards.
This should result in software that is much more flexible and able to do new things. It is quite possible we may see rapid changes in PrusaSlicer after 3.0.0 is released for two reasons:
The code is easier to work with.
Those working on the upgrade are now free to work on other improvements.
There’s another angle here: PrusaSlicer is open-source software, and it has been used to build other slicing systems. Most notably, BambuStudio and Orca Slicer. Any improvements to the base PrusaSlicer software will carry forward to these software tools as well, although it may take some time for changes to percolate through.
It sounds like we will have some shiny new slicing software for all fairly soon.
Via GitHub
