When to update

[jmdennis]

I was wondering when we know when new firmware is out there to load on our players.  I usually do the SVN updates when they seem to fix my problem I am having.  I do them daily but I know a lot of times firmware updates come out and would like to know when these happen so that I can do a reload of rockbox from scratch.

[Llorean]

The version of Rockbox available on the current build page changes every time a developer commits a change to the main source code. You can see when the changelog changes on the front page of the site.

[jmdennis]

I do those updates every day at least but what I meant was that I see in the forums they some times ask them to reload as new changes have come out to fix the problems they have been having.  I do download and unzip the rockbox folder and install this daily but I also know some times a new firmware comes out and I thought at these times a reinstall works better.

[Llorean]

Every version is a "new firmware", so I don't know what you mean by "a new firmware comes out."

We don't ask that people update. We require in the guidelines that they be running the current build (downloaded from the current build link on the left) before reporting a bug. They can also check the changelog on the front page of the site to see if any changes seem to fix their problem.

Perhaps you could clarify a bit on what exactly you're asking?

[jmdennis]

I looked at the manual again and I misread it in the forums.  I guess I thought some thing else would update the firmware but when I read further in the install I realize that it is just the bootloader that needs a special install.

[Llorean]

Yes, the bootloader rarely has a new version released. The only way to know if you need to update is to check the bootloader download (go to download.rockbox.org and browse to it) and see if the date is newer than the last time you updated.

Once RBUtil is the official install method, it's quite likely to include the option to update your bootloader (which will just replace it with the same version if yours isn't out of date, or may even detect and not update) for any players where a program can update the bootloader.

[pixelma]

Such important things like "a new bootloader is released and requires an update to use rockbox on target xyz" is also always announced on the "MajorChanges" page in the rockbox wiki. If not instantly then it most probably will be there the next day - I don't know of any occasion where it would have been completely forgotten.