Release Note

The Little Go release 2.0.1 has been published yesterday (12 May 2024) on the App Store. It contains the fix for a bug that affected games that were started with handicap.

Here’s the usual link to the GitHub release page.

Little Go 2.0.0 has been published on 10 May 2024 on the App Store, 18 months after the previous release 1.7.1. The release notes are available in the App Store update notes or on the GitHub release page.

The main user-facing changes in version 2.0.0 are two things:

1. The app now supports game variations.
2. An overhaul of the in-game user manual, plus the publication of an online version of the manual.

While these changes do not sound like much, they are effectively a huge step forward for the project, and accordingly I decided to increase the major version to indicate this milestone.

The remainder of this post are some of my memories of how v2 came to be and why I think a major version update was in order, so it’s perfectly safe to stop reading now 🙂.

The Little Go release 1.7.1 has just been published (September 23 2022) on the App Store. It contains fixes for two bugs, each of which caused the app to crash.

Here’s the usual link to the GitHub release page.

Little Go 1.7.0 has been published on September 18 2022 on the App Store. Another 1½ years have passed since the last release, which again is longer than I would have wished, but such is life… The new version continues the work started in 1.6.0, which has as its final goal the support of as many features of the SGF file format as possible. The release notes are available in the App Store update notes or on the GitHub release page.

Little Go 1.6.0 has been published on February 27 2021 on the App Store. This is the first release in almost 2 years, and it’s packed with improvements. You can read the release notes in the App Store update notes or on the GitHub release page.

Always two there are, no more no less. A master release and a bugfix release.

Alas, it seems to have become almost a rule that, shortly after I publish a master release of Little Go on the App Store, some issue is found and I have to follow up with a bugfix release. So here I present to you version 1.5.1 of Little Go which was published on the App Store last Sunday night and which contains the fix for a bug that affected users on older devices with iOS 9.x and below.

The annoying thing is that this time the problem was a piece of code that I had added in 1.5.0 to make UI testing work. In other words, my effort to increase the software quality had exactly the reverse effect. At least the bug was easy to find and fix, just a property (accessibilityFrameInContainerSpace) that was introduced in iOS 10 and which I had forgotten to protect with an appropriate @available guard.

Here's the usual link to the GitHub release page.

Little Go 1.5.0 has been published earlier today on the App Store. Version 1.5.0 is the first feature release since 1.2.0, almost 4 years ago.

The new version contains only a single feature: A new board setup mode in which you can place black or white stones in any order and combination to set up the initial board before you begin to play moves. This feature is a continuation of the work begun in version 1.4.0, where I added support for loading and saving .sgf files that contain stone and/or player setup nodes.

Also important in this version: I started to write automated UI tests. The main work was finding out how the UI testing API works and laying the groundwork for future tests (e.g. how to test the three different layouts, how to interact with the board to place a stone, etc.). Originally I had intended to automate all tests described in the manual testing script (file TESTING), but then I realized how much work this meant and I became completely paralyzed. Several weeks of stasis finally convinced me that the task of fully automating all UI tests would have to be broken down and completed with "baby steps" if the project ever was to see another release. So that's why in this version of Little Go there is less-than-might-be-expected UI testing.

That's all, folks. If you want you can finish by reading the App Store update notes or the GitHub release page.

Little Go 1.4.0 has been published on January 15 2019 on the App Store, followed-up two days later by the 1.4.1 update that contained a high-prio bugfix. Version 1.4.0 is a maintenance and bugfix release that mainly focuses on updating the project to the newest development environment, Xcode 10.1 and iOS 12.1 SDK.

Although the bugfixes are quite substantial, the amount of time and work that went into them was dwarfed by what I had to invest into just getting the project to run again under Xcode 10.1! This is why I am dreading each new Xcode release: Apple's relentless push for technical renewal is sometimes disheartening for me because I do not code for the platform for profit, and my willingness to spend large amounts of free time on this project has certainly diminished over the years. Ah well...

There are a few things related to the Xcode upgrade that I want to highlight, and a short outlook on a future version 1.5.0. Read on after the break. Or check out the App Store update notes and the GitHub release page.

Little Go 1.3.1 has been published a couple of days ago on the App Store. This release contains a single bugfix only - but one that I consider to be very important!

There's more to read after the break. The App Store update notes and the GitHub release page both have a shorter text.

Little Go 1.3.0 has just been published on the App Store. This is a technical and bugfix release whose focus is on updating the project to the iOS 9.3 SDK, and on fixing an evil ko detection bug that might have been responsible for many bug reports that I have received due to the infamous "The computer played an illegal move." alert. Many thanks to Denis Martynov for helping me with identifying this bug. I promised to release the bugfix

[...] as soon as possible, probably next weekend.

This was in June 2015 - over a year ago :-(

To find out about the changes that are in the release, either read the App Store update notes or hop over to the GitHub release page to see the changelog.