[GRASS5] The status of 5.0

[Helena]

> While it would be nice to be able to perform thorough testing
> "internally", I just don't see that happening.

We did quite systematic testing of a big part of GRASS5pre3 with Markus just
recently. While there is absolutely no way that we could test every option for
every kind of data combination we got a pretty good idea on how good (or bad)
the code is.
Vector support is the weekest and should be addressed by GRASS5.1 -
it should be made clear for GRASS5.0 that vector support is limited and
encourage
others to contribute to its development. Most of the rest really needs testing
by a large
users community as it is undoable by few people who just cannot have the variety

of data required for such testing.

Now I went through all listed bugs and identified 6 modules
which seem to have release critical bugs, so unless there is many more
not listed in Bugtracker it does not look too bad.

Therefore, please put all release critical bugs that you know of into bug
tracker
so that we are sure that we can keep track of all of them.

Attached is a list based on the current bug tracker and my opinion.
If others agree I would ask Markus to change their status to 80.

Release critical bugs identified so far
--------------------------------------
912 - warning in r.mapcalc for NULL and INT/INT behavior
853 - v.digit labeling areas
849, 818 - v.support PNT_TO_AREA failed, problem with imported e00
           (Markus offers a test data set)
758 - v.in.mif does not work
757,268,220 - v.in.shape
243 - i.orthophoto - Markus is asking for help

Modules affected by release critical bugs and decision needs to be taken
whether to keep or remove the module (it seems that none of them can be removed)

r.mapcalc
v.digit
v.support
i.orthophoto
v.in.mif
v.in.shape

ANYTHING ELSE MISSED BY THE Bugtracker?

Bugs which need some decision on what to do with them as I am not sure:
-----------------------------------------------------
855,260 - v.trim should we keep it or put into GRASS5.1 development? Markus says
in #260 that it
          needs total rewrite
257 - v.cutter is not reliable - is it good enough to keep it for release?
851 - v.area units - this sounds like wish to me, but it has priority 70, am I
missing something?
249,845 - r.reclass - I am not sure whether I understand this correctly but
it appears that the command works differently than described in manual,
I suggest here to change the manual and remove the * rule from there as it does
not
work and it does not seem to be an easy fix. It is easy to run r.null to change
the
NULLs to 0 or anything else on the reclassed file.
I suggest to remove the following sentence from the manual:
"To include all (remaining) values the asterix "*" can be used.
This rule has to be set as last rule. No further rules are accepted after
setting this rule."
and close this bug report
842 - I tried it and it is fixed but it has priority 70 from Markus, I think
that it should be closed.
836 - is the same as was 889 (nviz osx) and should be closed
832 - tcltkgrass, this was not a bug and related #831 is already closed. Should
this be closed too?762 - r.mapcalc test=@c_soil.kfact works for me - can
somebody double check it and close this bug?759 and 760 are the same thing - at
least one should be closed
255 - s.kcv was obviously removed from release - should be closed? where do we
keep
      track of the removed code? This is the case where by removing it, it
becomes dead
      I do not really know what it is.
240 - i.composite - reports suggest that this may be fixed - can anybody check
this,
      if it works it can be closed
232 - s.label - the manual page is from January 2002, was this module upgraded
      and put back? If yes this bug can be closed.
225 - v.rmdup seg fault, I tried it with some files and it worked for me, so it
may
      be data specific - if anybody has a messy vector file can you please try
it?
190 - vector topology. This is not a bug but a need for a change in
documentation -
Markus you went quite deep into the vector stuff, can you confirm that what
Andrea says
is true? What to do about it - change programmers manual description of vector
topology?
109 - is a 3D development for GRASS5.1

--------------------------------------------------------
The rest seems to be not release critical, mostly wishes - please look at them
and change to release critical if you think that they should not go into
release.
Otherwise the affected module should go into the release with
a Known bugs note in man page.
------------------------------------------------------
I suggest to include additional man page list (maybe next to "commands missing
a manual page") with man pages
of modules that were removed or that exist but are not good enough
for release (such as v.to.rast2, s.menu, ...) so that it is easy to look them up
and if somebody
wants to work on them include info where the source code is (it would be
GRASS5.1 or attic?).
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A side note:
> what do we do with "bugs" like this - keep them there with low priority
> (there is plenty of them there) or vote whether they should be removed?
>You can change the area to "wish" after clicking on "Area" on top of the
>bug report.

I am not sure that I should be making decisions about what should be
changed to wish and what is a critical release bug as I am not
a programmer and for whatever reason my view may differ from majority -
(although others could change it back)

have a nice weekend

Helena