How are we supposed to know that there is a new release/patch to Unity?

[ArachnidAnimal]

For the people that don’t use forums, how is anyone supposed to know that there is a new release/patch for Unity?
Apparently there was Unity 5.1.3 released on Aug 24, unbeknownst to me. Because I did not know to look at the proper “Announcements” forum. http://unity3d.com/unity/whats-new/unity-5.1.3

Because the Unity editor incorrectly reports that you have the latest version of Unity, due to some type of staggering of release.

Maybe there is a better solution to this process?
Because it is very confusing to have the editor tell you have the latest release, when in fact you don’t. I don’t know of any other software that does that for a public release.

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[zombiegorilla]

Patch releases are between regular releases and contain bug fixes that will be in the next release. They are meant to help address bugs that are affecting users currently without having to wait for a full release. Generally you don’t need to bother with them unless they address a bug that you are experiencing. It has happened that they have introduced new bugs, so unless you absolutely need it, wait until the full release.

They are listed here:

Download Archive

[Graham-Dunnett]

What ZombieGorilla said. We make weekly patch releases that fix bugs that Enterprise Support customers report into us. (And other bugs that are well known and need fixing.) Each week the patch release bug fixes are documented. Typically after 4 weeks we make a regular release, which will contain many bug fixes and a few feature corrections or whatever. This release may not be critically important to everyone. We can make the update check aware of a new release, but this doesn’t always happen.

I have a 5.1.1f1, and if I do an update check it’ll tell me it’s up-to-date.

[ArachnidAnimal]

@Graham Dunnett

What ZombieGorilla said. We make weekly patch releases that fix bugs that Enterprise Support customers report into us. (And other bugs that are well known and need fixing.) Each week the patch release bug fixes are documented. Typically after 4 weeks we make a regular release, which will contain many bug fixes and a few feature corrections or whatever. This release may not be critically important to everyone. We can make the update check aware of a new release, but this doesn’t always happen.

I have a 5.1.1f1, and if I do an update check it’ll tell me it’s up-to-date.

OK thanks for the explanation. Now I understand how it works. I will wait for the 5.2 to be released.

[Graham-Dunnett]

@ArachnidAnimal

will wait for the 5.2 to be released.

Waiting a couple of hours?

[Graham-Dunnett]

Oh… and a something update related. Usually we wait for a few days to check the new version is as good as we think it is. Provided there are no major problems, we’ll update the update check, so people know there is a real new version. This can take a week or so. And, it might be less obvious, but we do work extremely hard to ship a major release every 3 months.

[ArachnidAnimal]

@Graham Dunnett

Oh… and a something update related. Usually we wait for a few days to check the new version is as good as we think it is. Provided there are no major problems, we’ll update the update check, so people know there is a real new version. This can take a week or so. And, it might be less obvious, but we do work extremely hard to ship a major release every 3 months.

Ok, thanks for the info. It all makes sense now how the way Unity releases work.

[zombiegorilla]

I love this methodology. Twice now patch releases have dealt directly with a bug affecting us, and provided a fix without having a long wait or coming up with a work-around. At the same time, since the patches don’t really include new functionality, they can easily be skipped if they don’t apply. (we have a large-ish team, an update to the editor is non-trivial, we all have to be on the same version, and updates have to be tested well before we commit)