[bug #3117] [GRASS-dev] povray and grass [-> 6.1.0 freeze & release?]

[Hamish]

> Those functions aren't the problem. The problem with v.extract is that
> it's calling them before it calls G_gisinit(), which is supposed to be
> called before any other GRASS function.
> 
> [Apart from anything else, G_gisinit() sets the program name, which is
> used by G_fatal_error(), so anything which might cause G_fatal_error()
> to be called (i.e. almost everything) cannot safely be called before
> G_[no_]gisinit().]
> 
> I have no idea whether or not this actually causes problems at
> present; I'm just pointing out that it's a bug regardless of whether
> or not you happen to "get away with it".


Added some comments to lib/gis/parser.c about this for more visibility.
(non-doxygenized header)

I notice g.region has fallen afoul of this rule in the last 2 weeks.


If the change is to be made so stuff happening before G_parser() will
trigger a fatal error, can this wait until after 6.1.0 is released?

On the subject of 6.1.0, are there objections to declaring the feature
freeze in force /as of now/ and plan for a release date of 1 June?
We need to stop breaking and refactoring things for a little while.
AFAICT things have gotten *less* stable since the start of this month,
the original time the freeze was suggested to begin. And 6.1.0 is
overdue.

I would like to freeze everything but gis.m and the r.3D modules- I
don't want to kill the development momentum they currently enjoy. Gis.m
is important to have working well, and changes to the r3.* modules
shouldn't touch the rest of the package. Radim had mentioned he thought
it unpracticable to do a half-freeze. As the freeze will last until
6.2.0 is released in (guessing) 4-6 months time, we need to figure out
some solution - any new release is stalled until we do.
6.1.0 should be a CVS tag, development continues in CVS/HEAD, yes?
& 6.2.0 starts a new CVS branch.

The only important new thing I think needs to happen before 6.1.0 is to
finish any outstanding translation prep work, as suggested by Cedric,
  http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gis.grass.devel/12229

We also need to go through the bug tracker and increase the priority of
any bugs we consider Release-Critical for 6.2. I don't think we have any
true RC bugs: no active security bugs and fails-to-build stuff gets
fixed quickly, so I mean rough-edges like adding v.in.ogr split code and
lingering v.buffer warts. NVIZ segfault on Vector points save (#4377)
and cleaner d.labels text rotation too.

For kicks and giggles we could prepare 6.0.3 and 5.4.1 rc-1 at the same
time as 6.1.0, and release them soon after.
I'm not sure if this is fixed yet, but it would be very nice if 5.4.1
could ignore the extra 3D lines in a GRASS 6 mapset's WIND file
gracefully. The 5.4 release branch probably needs some merging from
grass5 HEAD; I think 6.0.x branch has been kept pretty much up to date.


??,
Hamish