K1LSB wrote:Not sure if this is the correct place to ask this, but does Richie's latest 2.9.0.8 Release incorporate any of Steve's G7KLJ improvements, and/or vise versa?
No and no.
Put differently, are there now two distinct and separate branches of Thetis, neither of which include any of the recent enhancements incorporated in the other branch?
Yes.
And if that's the case, then going forward, will the typical Thetis user likely have to decide up-front which branch of Thetis he will align his operations with, at the cost of painting himself out of the unique features offered by the other branch?
As far as I can tell, having played with both versions, from a purely functional perspective you are not missing anything by using Richie's version, and you are missing things with Steve's version.
Richie has fixed some major issues regarding meter settings, added voice squelch, improved AmpView operation, and added the bug fix from Steve's version (that Warren also helped with) that was disturbing PureSignal operations on Hermes and Hermes-derivative hardware using Protocol 1 firmware. This latter issue was what got Steve fired up as it was affecting the Hermes Lite 2 community. Steve also made some significant changes to the implementation of portaudio in VAC, but at this point I can't detect a difference in performance between the two branches with regard to that. So unless and until Steve produces something that represents a major change in functionality it would seem more advantageous to go with the version that has the greater functionality.
Is there some specific bug fix or feature that Steve's branch has that doesn't exist in Richie's branch, something that is noticeable by the user and not just a foundational, behind the scenes, type of thing, that you are interested in?
All issues/bugs can be reported over on GitHub, and/or posted about here on the forums for discussion. I wont be personally fixing them in the short term unless a game breaker.