Pre-Release 5.10.0-beta1

This public beta is designed to allow for volunteer testing of coming updates and allow plugin developers to prepare for upcoming code changes. BUGS ARE EXPECTED in this build, as under-the-hood inline code changes have been made in this update which may have unintended consequences.

Auto-Update is not available for this beta program. To test the beta, you must install the new version manually. Feedback and comments would be greatly appreciated if you want to test!

Changes and Enhancements

• Added new modules.json and ships.json files to improve security and readability
• Added a core Spanch URL provider plugin
• Added a new auth response page for successful FDEV authentication
• Added a new Open Log Folder option to the Help menu
• Added a new --start_min command flag to force the application to start minimized
• Added a new pop-up if plugins fail to load or are not supported
• Updated commodities and module files to the latest versions
• Updated core EDMC and core Plugin menus to a standardized layout
• Updates the Inara URL formats to the new endpoints

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where indentation of text strings in certain settings windows under various languages would be unevenly indented
• Fixed an issue where the Plugins Folder label in the Plugins settings window would cut off the selection box for the plugin storage location

Code Clean Up

• Added future annotation imports to help with code compatibility
• Added a few conditional checks on input processing
• Simplified some RegEx expressions, complex functions, logic flows, and Import statements
• Simplified the WinSparkle GitHub Build Action
• Began to change single-character variables to more descriptive names
• Moved a number of global variables into their requisite classes
• Updated a number of dependencies to the latest versions
• Updated GitHub Actions to the latest versions
• Updated a number of resource-allocating functions to use more efficient closing logic
• Updated some calls to arrays to be more efficient
• Removed a number of old-style typing hints in favor of PEP 585 style hints
• Removed a number of redundant if - return - else or raise - else statements for code readability
• Removed some default parameter assignments
• Removed some obsolete calls to Object

Plugin Developers

• modules.p and ships.p have been deprecated, and will be removed in 6.0. If you are using these files, please update to use the new modules.json and ships.json files instead.
• A new method of standardizing the paddings used in settings panels has been applied to the core settings panels. We strongly encourage you to follow these style hints! A proper guide will be added to the wiki.