Snapshots post (#31)

content/news/neoforge-snapshots.md

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+---
+title: "NeoForge for Snapshots"
+date: 2024-03-13T12:30:00+01:00
+categories:
+- News
+author: neoforgedteam
+summary: |
+    Our team regularly updates NeoForge to snapshot versions of Minecraft.
+    This helps us anticipate changes, and spread out the porting work.
+    In accordance with our commitment to transparency, we are now making the code for NeoForge snapshot versions public.
+description: |
+    Our team regularly updates NeoForge to snapshot versions of Minecraft.
+    This helps us anticipate changes, and spread out the porting work.
+    In accordance with our commitment to transparency, we are now making the code for NeoForge snapshot versions public.
+---
+
+## Introduction
+Our team regularly updates NeoForge to snapshot versions of Minecraft.
+This helps us anticipate changes, and spread out the porting work.
+In accordance with our commitment to transparency, we are now making the code for NeoForge snapshot versions public.
+
+In the past, we have been porting NeoForge to snapshots and pre-releases entirely in private,
+and the only information available to the community was the list of commits shown in the `#neoforge-private` channel
+on our [Discord server](https://discord.gg/neoforged).
+
+In reality, only the initial phase of a port needs to be private, as we work with the raw Minecraft sources to fix the patches that could not be applied.
+Once we are done with porting these patch _rejects_ and fixing compilation issues,
+we will now publish the code for snapshot ports on the main NeoForge repository, on a separate branch.
+
+## Release Model
+Snapshot versions of NeoForge are alpha versions, versioned based on the next stable release, the target snapshot and a timestamp: `<next stable release>-alpha.<target snapshot>.<timestamp>`.
+
+As of this post, these versions must be built manually. They are not available from our installer or our Maven repository.
+
+## Support
+**NeoForge for snapshot versions is not intended for playing.**
+Our main goal is to discover bugs and prepare for changes in the next release of Minecraft.
+
+If you encounter NeoForge bugs on a snapshot version,
+we encourage you to report them to our GitHub issue tracker.
+However, we cannot guarantee a timely fix.
+
+## Disclaimer
+**Snapshot updates are not guaranteed.**
+The team will decide if and when it is appropriate to port to a snapshot,
+depending on the size of the snapshot, the current team availablity, etc...
+
+## For Modders
+Modders that want to play around with the latest snapshot versions of Minecraft to see how their code will be affected can build a NeoForge snapshot version.
+However, we strongly advise against releasing mods for snapshot versions and/or using them in production environments.
+We also encourage modders to prioritize support for stable releases of Minecraft.
+
+## For Contributors
+**Our main focus remains on the stable releases of Minecraft.**
+
+Only changes relevant to the updates should be submitted to a snapshot branch.
+Every other change should be submitted to the main branch as usual.
+Currently this is the `1.20.x` branch.
+
+Commits submitted to a snapshot branch will be squashed with the rest of the port into a single commit.
+Refactors and new features not directly required to get the port to a functional state will not be accepted until after the snapshot changes have been squashed and the breaking changes window officially begins.
+
+## Conclusion
+We hope that this new approach will allow for more polished NeoForge updates to new Minecraft versions.
+Let us know what you think!