Just quick reply:
Master branch (a.k.a
5.0.0-alpha) is development branch e.g. things there could be broken (e.g. build system or compatibility) ;-)
Current stable branch/version is 4.1 where most patches from master were backported. If I remember correctly: differences between master and
4.1
are:
- source code structure
- new version of C++ standard is required,
- dropped support of cppan
- code clean up
- there are some changes that breaks binary compatibility between 4.x version (that why it is marked as 5.x).
- and of course there are some more patches in mean time (committed after 4.1 release), but I am not sure if there was something critical.
So those how are looking for stability and backward compatibility should use 4.1.
Those who wish to improve tesseract should use master branch.