In repository openSUSE:Tumbleweed zypper installed boinc-manager 8.0.4-1.2, which is flagged as pre-release on github, which I think is a beta or alpha version.
It didn’t work, so I installed the flatpak version 8.0.2 which is the latest stable version and it worked great.
Question: Is this normal behavior? Does tumbleweed default to installing pre-release versions or is this a bug?
I ask mostly because I’m curious how bleeding edge Tumbleweed is supposed to be. I don’t feel like I have a firm idea on its philosophy and when I Google around surprisingly I don’t find specifics that explain this.
zypper has nothing do with github. zypper installs whatever package(s) are published for the openSUSE. If you believe this version should not be published, you should be talking to the openSUSE package maintainer(s). If installed package does not work you should open bug report on openSUSE bugzilla.
Then it is the wrong category. Applications is for technical help. General chat goes into - surprise - Open Chat.
In almost all cases - no. It is user to user forum. If you described the problems you had with your application (something beyond the famous “does not work”), some user may be able to assist.
The direct way to contact maintainers is bugzilla. But you need to provide more information than “it does not work”. You may try contacting e-mails listed in the changelog (in particular, in the entry that mentions update to the version you think is bad), you may look at users listed as maintainers on https://build.opensuse.org/ for this package.
There could be some IRC or other chat channels, but I never used them myself.