jQuery Nightly Builds

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After much wailing and gnashing of teeth by certain members of the discussion mailing list (read: me), we now have automated nightly builds of jQuery ready for mass consumption. These builds came about at the request of we community members who would like to experiment with the most recent features of jQuery on our projects, but who, for whatever reason, find ourselves behind firewalls that restrict our access to the subversion repository.

Without further ado, here are the gory details: You can get your bleeding-edge-jQuery fix at http://jquery.com/src/nightlies/. This folder will simply show you a list of available files. There are 4 files in there in which most of you will be most interested…

  1. jquery-nightly.js – Pretty self-explainatory. It’s the uncompressed jQuery. Mmmm… fresh from the repository
  2. jquery-nightly.pack.js – As the more perceptive of you have already guessed, it’s the packed version of #1
  3. jquery-nightly.release.zip – This contains the docs, test suite, and all of the pre-built versions of jQuery
  4. jquery-nightly.build.zip – Is the real win for we poor souls behind the fiery-walls of the corporate world. It contains the full jquery path from the repo, and is everything you need to build your very own jQuery

The nightlies folder will also fill up with dated versions of all 4 of these files so that you can go find jQuery at whatever vintage you prefer.

New versions of the nightlies will be added every day at 2am EST (7am GMT), and will consist of the most recent revision from the subversion repository at that time.

If all of this talk of subversion, repositories, bleeding-edge, and nightly building makes the stability craving web deveoper inside you run away screaming, fear not. The stable release download you need is still right here waiting for you.

Thanks go to John Resig for hooking us up with the server-side magic that got this automated build process running (not to mention for the server, the bandwidth, and for jQuery in general :) ).

14 thoughts on “jQuery Nightly Builds”

  2. Joel Birch on said:

    Excellent. No more venturing into weird and unfamiliar Unix-land to retrieve the latest version from SVN. No more leaving Eclipse thinking “what was all that about”? Ultimately, no more being made to feel inferior from not knowing what the heck I was doing and reading about everyone else seeming not to have an issue with it! Thanks for this – I appreciate the effort.

  3. KDee on said:

    Excellent ! Thanks.

    According to this, maybe a stupid question, but, is jQuery has a “Changelog” ?
    Because navigate on subversion repository for know last modification is a little frustrating!

  5. Christopher Lenz on said:

    Serving the subversion repository under SSL in addition to plain HTTP should usually be enough to circumvent those infamous braindead firewalls.

  6. Paul McLanahan on said:

    @Christopher

    Normally you’d be right. But in my situation, we aren’t allowed to connect outside of the network via SSH either. We can’t even connect to an SSH server running on port 80 (like I may have tried at my house). Even the SVN servers running on apache_mod_dav_svn don’t work, because the DAV parts of the HTTP protocol aren’t allowed through the firewall. The only SVN servers that work are those served through HTTPS. So, for me anyway, HTTPS (SSL) would be a good solution, and more secure for sending authentication for committing code as well. But it would be a huge switch on the server to go from svn:// to https://. Though, I may suggest that to John at some point if his server is capable and he’s willing to buy a cert.

  8. Paul McLanahan on said:

    @KDee & adam

    Do you mean http://jquery.com/dev/svn/log/trunk/jquery/. That’s a list of SVN log messages for each revision in the jQuery repo.

    @Jonney

    Well, as far as when you “should” update, that’s a question of stability. I think you only “should” update a project when there is a new stable release. But if you’re having a problem with the code in the most recent release, and you’ve looked on the bug tracker and your issue is fixed in the latest code in SVN, then go grab the nightly and use it. I would NEVER suggest that you use a nightly in a production web application, but it can be useful in developing one if you want a sneak peak at what the next release will include, and you can wait for that release before releasing your web app.

    I hope that cleared up the confusion more than created more…

  10. Jonney on said:

    @Paul
    Well,I see.Excellent!Thanks.
    And I sugguest that the lastest stable release version number should be show in jQuery’s home page.

    Regards!

  11. Paul McLanahan on said:

    @Vic

    While I don’t disagree that the jQuery.com website is a work in progress as far as getting new people into the library, I do believe that if you look, you will find just about everything you’d ever want. I recommend starting at the “Tutorials” page linked to at the top of all pages on the site (http://docs.jquery.com/Tutorials). This page has links to examples, demos, screencasts, and nearly every other kind of get-you-going-quickly resource you’d want for jQuery. I’d also ask that you keep in mind that jQuery isn’t so much something that does anything out-of-the-box, but it’s something with which you can very quickly and easily make amazing things happen mere minutes from removing it from said box. It’s a tool; and the limits of what can be done with it are expanded daily. That being said, if you want to see what people have already done with it, a really nice library of “plugins” exist and are also linked to at the top of every page of this site (http://jquery.com/plugins/). I hope you find what you’re looking for. jQuery has made my life as a professional web developer much much easier. I think you’ll find the same is true of nearly every active member of this community, and it’s what I believe contributes most to the overall friendly and helpful attitude of the developers here.

  12. Jason on said:

    Are the nightly builds no longer working? I can’t seem to access them (I tried the zip version too, but it was from the 17th?)