Testing assistance is always welcome. If you're able to spend time testing the software, or simply verifying that your system continues to function after upgrade, you can find the latest build of the IdP in our maven repository in this directory:
https://build.shibboleth.net/maven/snapshots/net/shibboleth/idp/idp-distribution/
The latest SNAPSHOT tree will generally be at the bottom of the directory listing with the most recent date and the highest version available. Within each snapshot directory, a month's worth of builds are available in dated snapshots, in both zip and tar.gz format. In all other respects apart from the filename, these builds are identical to the standard installers we release officially and can be installed in the usual fashion by unpacking and running the install script.
The latest snapshot is also available using one of the following commands. The difference between the commands is the packaging of the distribution. Some files in the .zip distribution have Windows line endings, while corresponding files in the .tar.gz distribution have Unix line endings.
Latest IdP snapshot (Windows line endings)
mvn dependency:get -DremoteRepositories=https://build.shibboleth.net/maven/snapshots -Dartifact=net.shibboleth.idp:idp-distribution:5.0.0-SNAPSHOT:zip -Dtransitive=false mvn dependency:copy -Dartifact=net.shibboleth.idp:idp-distribution:5.0.0-SNAPSHOT:zip -DoutputDirectory=./
Latest IdP snapshot (Unix line endings)
mvn dependency:get -DremoteRepositories=https://build.shibboleth.net/maven/snapshots -Dartifact=net.shibboleth.idp:idp-distribution:5.0.0-SNAPSHOT:tar.gz -Dtransitive=false mvn dependency:copy -Dartifact=net.shibboleth.idp:idp-distribution:5.0.0-SNAPSHOT:tar.gz -DoutputDirectory=./
At the moment, we do not have regular builds of the Windows installer available, but any we make available can be found in:
http://shibboleth.net/downloads/identity-provider/testing/
Of course, you should use a development system and a copy of your real configuration whenever testing. If you run into any problems, you are encouraged to file bugs at https://issues.shibboleth.net/
You should keep in mind that even if snapshots are intended to be stable, they may include uncompleted features and new files that may not appear in the final release, so while it is generally safe to upgrade a snapshot to the final release, that is not advised.