GanttProject 3.0 packaging and update system

TL;DR: there are many somewhat technical details below. Long story short, GanttProject 3.0 comes with built-in update system. Leave it enabled to get bugfixes and other minor updates faster.

GanttProject 3.0 beta, build 2910

We started a public beta testing of GantProject 3.0 in August. The testing goes fine, we already see a few dozens of people who use GP 3.0 is their daily work. GanttProject 3.0 is compatible with our old good GP 2.X series and it reads and writes files in the same format. It is also very stable, so we encourage to join the beta testing.

Due to many factors, we had to include Java Runtime into the distributions, and the size of GanttProject 3.0 distro is now about 100 megabytes. Because of this and because building a complete distro for all platforms takes a lot of time, we decided to implement the update system which can install small updates as they are ready.

So, today we published update 2910 with many bugfixes and usability improvements. If you launch GP 3.0, the update system will suggest to install this update, as well as the previous ones.

Work with file storage was rewritten in GP 3.0 and now documents from the local computer, from WebDAV storages and from our own GanttProject Cloud are available in the single File Dialog. It is already very nice and became even better in build 2910:

• Offline cloud documents support is nearly completed. We fixed a lot of bugs, made the user interface more intuitive and checked that GP switches between offline and online modes smoothly (and fixed it when it didn't). Offline cloud documents are great, and we'll share more details on this later.
• Cloud documents were seamlessly integrated into the Recent Documents list. 
• Work with local documents became more error-proof. "Save" button becomes disabled if the target file can't be written, and we show a hint explaining the reasons. "Overwrite" checkbox prevents from accidental overwriting of the existing files. 

Local documents in the File Dialog

GanttProject Cloud document in the Recent Documents list

Download GanttProject 3.0, update to the latest build and join beta-testing! GanttProject 3.0 is integrated with GanttProject Cloud server for storing your project documents. if you work in a team, don't miss the opportunity to try GP Cloud. It is free during the beta-testing.