Do you want to contribute to a better stability of Turris OS? Or would you just like to make sure that your configuration won‘t collide with our updates? You can take part in testing new Turris releases! This manual is devoted to describing how to do that.

Turris OS is currently released in various branches, which have different functions and varying stability - you can pick, which branch you want to test. All of our development branches including the production ones can be found in https://repo.turris.cz/.

Development branches are ordered by how up to date they are and in inverted order by stability. This means that Deploy is a stable version, which however does not yet include the newest functions. Test is the opposite - very stable, but containing functions, which we are still working on or just released.

Deploy – Default and most stable branch. Suggested for all users.

RC – Release candidate. This branch contains next Turris OS release. Please join this branch to help us test the next release. It's more stable than Daily but it can contain bugs. You can use it if you:

• you are a relatively experienced user and you want to test the new system release.
• you are aware that test version are not entirely stable and they may require the odd manual adjustment from your side now and then
• you are aware of the consequences and you agree to them

Daily – This branch is same as nightly except it is updated only when automatic tests are successful. Should be more stable than Nightly but a manual intervention might be sometimes required.

Nightly – Branch built every night containing latest software. Suggested only forexperienced users as it's sometimes broken and requires manual intervention.

Test – Branch used during development. It's often broken. It's usage is highly discouraged.

Connect to your router as root through SSH and enter the following code:

switch-branch rc

After having entered this command, you have switched permanently to RC and an automatic download and update to the most recent version of RC takes place. If you want to switch to a different branch, just replace the rc argument with the name of the branch of your choice.

A set of automatic test written in BoardFarm is run on all branches of Turris OS with the exception of Nightly. If you have software on Turris, which you would like us to test with each build, you can create tests in BoardFarm and send them to us. We in turn check, if we can use your tests and then integrate them, which will make them part of the set of tests which is run with every build.

Now you can start testing! This mainly means you check if all functions you are using are working as they should be, especially those packages, which you installed separately and make you happy.

If you notice any problems, please report them to us at tech.support@turris.cz. Best is, if you include a detailed description of the circumstances, which might have contributed to the issue. We are very grateful for any comments and promise to get back to you.

If you like using RC and it only has a few issues, which you are ready to handle, then that’s great! If you don’t like using RC, you can easily go back to a more stable branch or any other branch using the switch-branch deploy command.

switch-branch deploy

Thanks for any contribution you make to Turris, we truly appreciate your effort in making the Internet a safer place.