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darktable

DESIGN
Velocity2.5

Open-source photography workflow application and raw developer.

www.darktable.org ↗

darktable keeps a twice-yearly release rhythm, but its feed publishes checksums where features should be.

raw-photo-editingrelease-cadencenightly-buildsopen-sourceappimage
◆Current state
darktable tags releases on a predictable rhythm — a feature release around each solstice, bug-fix point releases a few weeks later, and a dev-cycle tag opening the next minor line. The current stable line is 5.6.0 from June 2026, with 5.7 already open for development. A rolling nightly tag re-publishes daily on top of that, aimed at users who want in-progress work and are willing to run a separate library because the schema can change under them.
◆Where it's heading
The cadence is stable and the project is clearly healthy, but this feed carries almost no information about what actually changes. Release bodies are build instructions and SHA-256 checksums; the dev-cycle tags say only "the beginning of the 5.x dev cycle." The signal available here is release rhythm, not product direction — the substance lives in release notes this feed does not reproduce.
◆Prediction
The pattern points to a 5.6.x bug-fix release followed by 5.8.0 around the end of 2026, matching the December and June cadence of 5.4.0 and 5.6.0. Nothing in these entries indicates what the 5.7 cycle is building.

◆Recent moves

  1. 19d ago

    Nightly development build (rolling tag)

    A rolling nightly tag that re-publishes daily with a stability caution and AppImage glibc requirements. It carries no description of what changed, and its daily re-tagging inflates apparent release cadence.

    View source ↗
  2. 1mo ago

    darktable 5.6.0 stable feature release

    The current stable feature release, and the anchor of the twice-yearly cadence. The entry body is limited to build guidance and checksums, so what shipped in 5.6.0 is not visible from this feed.

    View source ↗
  3. 2mo ago

    5.7 development cycle opens

    A branch-opening marker for the 5.7 development cycle, not a shipped release. darktable tags these ahead of the corresponding stable version.

    View source ↗
  4. 6mo ago

    darktable 5.4.1 bug-fix release

    A bug-fix point release on the 5.4 line, following the same pattern as 5.2.1 and 5.0.1 before it. No fixes are enumerated in the entry.

    View source ↗
  5. 8mo ago

    darktable 5.4.0 feature release

    The December 2026 feature release, the other half of darktable's solstice cadence and the predecessor to 5.6.0. As with the later releases, the body is packaging detail rather than feature notes.

    View source ↗
  6. 8mo ago

    5.5 development cycle opens

    The dev-cycle marker opening 5.5, tagged two days before 5.4.0 shipped. These paired tags are a consistent part of darktable's branching routine rather than user-facing events.

    View source ↗