The team has just published builds of the first candidate of FreeCAD 1.1, you can download them on GitHub. Here is what it means and what’s going to happen next.

The release candidates are basically preliminary builds of the final version. They are aimed at a particular demographic: people who want to help the team make a final check for major regressions before the final release can be published. If you are one of those people, please download a build for your operating system, test it, and report any new issues you run into.

We are currently down to 5 critical bugs that block the v1.1 release (we call them release blockers). The number of blockers can temporarily go up, if a lot of people download RC1 and report major issues, and that’s great. It means that the final official release will be more polished.

If you are a developer willing to contribute bugfixes, come look at the list of reports, pick an issue that seems trivial to resolve, write a fix, and submit a pull request. We have weekly merge meetings on Mondays to discuss submitted patches. You are welcome to join!