GanttProject 3.0 is a major update.
Release Highlights
Integration with GanttProject Cloud
GanttProject Cloud is a project collaboration service for GanttProject. If you're working in a team and need to share projects, collaborate safely, keep the history of project revisions, track resource allocations across all projects, you have to try GanttProject Cloud.
Bundled Java Runtime and Update Channel
GanttProject packages for Windows and macOS are bundled with Java Runtime. You don't need to download anything except GanttProject distro. Minor updates are delivered through the update channel and can be installed instantly.
Interoperability with Excel and more
GanttProject can now export projects directly as Excel documents and import them back. There are also a few relatively minor new features which mostly improve application usability.
Installation notes and system requirements
GanttProject runs on any modern hardware and operating system which is capable of running Java Runtime. Packages for Windows and macOS are self-sufficient and do not require installing anything else. DEB package for Linux requires any Java 11+ runtime. ZIP package requires Java 11+ runtime with JavaFX modules.
GanttProject and Java Runtime totally require about 200Mb of the disk space.
Windows
GanttProject for Windows is shipped as an executable installer bundled with BellSoft Liberica Java Runtime. Just launch the installer after downloading. Default settings in the installer must be fine for the most of users.
Possible reports from anti-virus software
Some anti-virus programs may report viruses in the installer. This is a known issue which happens to installers very often. It doesn't mean that the file is infected, it rather means that an antivirus engine have seen malware which was packed using a similar installer.
The installer was checked by VirusTotal and at the moment of writing this no engines reported positive results (which is good).
If your anti-virus software reports positive result, this is most likely a false positive, provided that the file which you downloaded is the original one. You can check if you downloaded the original file by checking its MD5 checksum. The MD5 sum of the original installer is a5fca7353ce1ec1364dff7e543e20786
If you can't or don't want to run program which your antivirus engine considers as infected, try using platform-independent ZIP archive. This distribution includes no native code and doesn't require Administrator privileges. It requires Java Runtime to be installed.
macOS
GanttProject for macOS is shipped as a self-sufficient disk image with a signed and notarized GanttProject application bundled with BellSoft Liberica Java Runtime. The disk image appears as a volume in Finder. You can launch GanttProject directly from the volume or drag it to Applications to install it on macOS system.
Ubuntu/Mint/ other Debian-based Linux distros
GanttProject for Linux is packaged as a deb package and includes no Java Runtime. The package lists a number of the known Java Runtime packages in the dependencies. Installing any of them must be sufficient.
You can install GanttProject deb package using your system package management tools, such as synaptic, Ubuntu software, apt, dpkg, etc. Double-click from the user interface or running dpkg -i ganttproject_3.0.3000-1_all.deb in the command line should work.
ZIP archive
ZIP archive distro can be used on any platform capable of running Java 11+. Java Runtime is not included and you have to install it separately. GanttProject requires Java Runtime version 11+ with JavaFX modules. We recommend using BellSoft Liberica Java Runtime. Choose Full JRE option for your platform.
Another Java Runtime with JavaFX is Azul Zulu. There is also a very convenient tool called SDKMAN! for downloading and managing Java runtimes. It is Linux-native, but it also works fine on macOS and on Windows with GitHub Shell.
Compatibility
GanttProject 3.0 is fully compatible with the files produced by GanttProject 2.8.+ in both directions. GanttProject 3.0 is compatible with the settings file produced by earlier versions, however, older versions may break when reading a settings file written by GanttProject 3.0
Updates
Maintenance updates
Maintenance updates, also called patch updates, provide bugfixes and localization updates. In the dot-separated version number (e.g. 3.0.3000) the third component indicates the patch number.
We normally do not introduce new user-visible features in maintenance updates. We guarantee full compatibility between project files and settings produced by different GanttProject versions within the same maintenance update cycle. Maintenance updates are supposed to make GanttProject more stable and less buggy and are supposed to be safe to install.
Maintenance updates to GanttProject 3.0 will be delivered through the Update Channel. We are targeting at weekly or bi-weekly maintenance update cycles and we highly recommend to keep the auto-update options in the settings switched on.
We don't plan to build complete distribution packages for the maintenance updates.
Feature updates
Feature updates ship new features. In the dot-separated version number the second component indicates the feature update.
A new feature update may be less stable than a preceding one with maintenance patches and may introduce new bugs and/or be less localized. Feature updates may also break project file compatibility in the backward direction (that is, earlier versions may not be able to read files produced by newer versions). In the forward direction, newer versions are promised to be able to read files produced by the older versions.
Feature updates will be packaged as complete packages for all supported platforms and will be available through the Update Channel if that makes sense. We're targeting at monthly or bi-monthly feature update cycles.