Accessing test and development builds
Try out the current release candidate for the next Jalview Desktop release by downloading an installer for Jalview Test. For the latest features currently in development, you can also install Jalview Develop. These apps are configured to download and launch the latest versions provided by the test release and develop over the air update channels.
Running old versions of Jalview
The Jalview Release History lists all versions of Jalview since Version 2 was released in 2005. You’ll also find links to release notes, and downloads that will allow you to run older versions.
Open development
Jalview is open source, and primarily written in Java. All Jalview’s development takes place in the open. That means you can try out new features as soon as they appear, suggest improvements, and help spot bugs.
Get involved
If you’d like to help out then we recommend you:
- Sign up for Jalview’s Issue Tracker.
- Say hello on
- Jalview Discussion Forum (same login as our issue tracker)
- the jalview developers chatroom (needs a github account or you can talk via matrix)
- Developer meetings also take place weekly via Jitsi.
- Checkout jalview’s sourcecode from https://gitlab.jalview.org/jalview/jalview.git and build it yourself.
- Take a look at the (many) open issues at https://issues.jalview.org and help out fixing a bug or adding a new feature.
Contributing to Jalview
There are plenty of opportunities for features, fixing bugs, or generally helping out with Jalview or JalviewJS development. To get started, take a look at our Guide for Jalview Developers.
Please reach out to Jim Procter (via gitter, PM on https://discourse.jalview.org/u/jalviewadmin/activity, etc, or plain old email) if you’d like to become a contributor.
Extending Jalview for your own research
We are happy to advise if you want to use and extend Jalview as part of another research project. Please get in contact with Geoff Barton or Jim Procter via Jalview Discussion Forum