It's not about the 5 minutes of compile time, it's about the signalling.
Just *when* is git ready for testing? You don't know from the outside.
I do lurk here a lot and still am unsure quite often.
Even simply releasing an alpha *tarball* would be useful enough. What is needed is the signal to test, rather than a fully-built package.
I can see that, and can absolutely get behind the idea of a nightly being flagged as an alpha, since it should involve next to no developer time.
I may be overestimating the amount of time that goes towards producing a release; the fact that the full-on alpha releases were stopped did imply to me that it's not insignificant.
