I didn’t mean that Epic should stop develop new functionality, or enhance existing; I am well aware that it is a requirement to stay ahead - or keep up with the competition. My point is that I have encountered - several times - that a feature, broken in one version, is solved in the next, but that one introduces another issue, completely unrelated, which is repaired in the version following. Not just between subversions, even releases within a subversion can break things. and if you update your version (say 5.5 to 5.5.1; 5.5.1 to 5.5.2 and so on) and something breaks, you have NO possibility to revert that update. I have asked for this before - I don’t mind how it’s done, a .zip file containing the changed executables would do, or a function to revert the update - it’s all fine.
Building and debugging it from the repository - of course it’s an option, but I’m on my own, no C++ or Python knowledge (I can read and understand the code but lack programming experience in these languages) and don’t have oversight of the 3D / gaming domain.
In my development days, the OS I worked on is propriety but the whole system is very well documented, and up-to-date. It still is - after over 40 years of development and maintenance. I know some of the engineers - and documenting is part of their job.