Might be a way us non-programmers can help the devs (by reporting bugs and problems)
This is our problem: We don't have enough devs with enough time to work on the mod. We have just two official devs.
1. Radfast is very busy with his work. He told me he would be back in May, but he hasn't managed to come back yet.
2. Micdoodle is way busier with real life issues. He comes in and out every one or two months on GitHub and codes something. I barely see him using Twitter at all.
This leaves SteveKunG as the only non-official coder who has contributed significantly to the mod (sorry if I missed somebody, but
this is what GitHub tells me). All the others are translators, graphic artists and eventual coders. Hence the "Here's how you can help" there. We can't count only on mic and radfast to do all the things forever. Sure they have done a marvelous job, specially Radfast, his willpower made my jaw drop dozens of times. I've never seen a programmer who not only coded that well but also wrote a lot on the wiki and answered steadfastly posts and bug reports. He has my respects.
Sorry for not having a good answer, but I simply can't emphasis this enough: we can't expect our official devs to do everything forever, we have other issues to be taken care of...... and the mod is not going away, by the way.
If you or anybody else knows Java, or is learning it, and feel like contributing, please do, you are most welcome. I don't want to mean people should contribute out of necessity (I mean, for the lack of devs for the time being) but because it may be worth doing or enjoyable.
There is not many options besides waiting for both to come back: volunteers can pick up something code-wise (bug fixing is a good start) and push-request it on GitHub. I'll make sure to slap mic's and radfast's heads to review the submissions.
"Can I test GC 1.8?" Yes! You can download
the source code and compile it yourself, no guarantee it will work.
"And what about 1.9?" There is nothing. Sorry.
As to me, I barely have time. I started to learn
Minecraft modding in late 2015 exactly to be able to help modding, but I couldn't do much further, since my era plenty of free time is long gone. I get home from work very late, I write 1 or 2 posts here or somewhere, boom! It's f******ing 2AM, and what I planned is postponed for the next day. My resource pack release has been postponed for 2 months at least.
EDIT: By the way, micdoodle was on GitHub these days:
https://github.com/micdoodle8/Galacticraft/commits/MC1.8
EDIT2: We have addons worth trying:
https://forum.micdoodle8.com/index.php?forums/addons.11/