[GRASS5] GRASS 5.0.1 released

[Markus Neteler]

On Tue, Jan 28, 2003 at 10:36:41AM -0500, Helena wrote:
> Markus,
> 
> I did not realize that r.mapcalc fixes are not included 5.0.1
> One reason I do not recomend people using 5.0.0 (and why I don't
> use it myself - we use either pre3 or the CVS version)
>  is that r.mapcalc released with 5.0.0 does not write the command 
> into the history files - that makes r.mapcalc practically unusable
> for any bigger project. I hoped that it will be fixed in 5.0.1
> Or am I missing something? Why wasn't the updated r.mapcalc included?

I am not 100% sure how many r.mapcalc3 fixes reached the release_branch.
In general every developer is responsible to submit an important
fix immediately also to the release_branch.
This question can be only answered by Glynn.

> What is the point of releasing 5.0.1 - the fixes there are really 
> minimal (at least accordining to the news) while the important ones 
> were not included. Would it be better to wait with the release and get
> at least 
> r.mapcalc and datum projections there. What is holding r.mapcalc ?

You are right. There is not much point in releasing 5.0.1 (only when it
were done already in October after finding the MacOSX bugs). But some
team members didn't like that idea - Glynn and me proposed several
times to release it...

See (there are many more, search for 5.0.1 in 'grass5' archives):
http://grass.itc.it/pipermail/grass5/2002-October/004012.html
http://grass.itc.it/pipermail/grass5/2002-October/004152.html
http://grass.itc.it/pipermail/grass5/2002-October/004140.html
http://grass.itc.it/pipermail/grass5/2002-November/004384.html
http://grass.itc.it/pipermail/grass5/2002-December/004431.html
http://grass.itc.it/pipermail/grass5/2002-December/004487.html

[Sidenote: IMHO the definition of "critical bug" does not apply to
 GRASS 5.0.x. As we have modular commands, what means "critial"?
 Maybe when talking about library bugs, we can call them critial.
 But commands cannot be in a critial state in general, it much
 depends on personal preference/needs. If my prefered command(s)
 do not work, that's critical, but just for me.
 This definition seems to somewhat slow down the release frequency!
 See e.g.
  http://grass.itc.it/pipermail/grass5/2002-October/004152.html
 ]

Also part of the NVIZ updates are missing (etc). I released 5.0.1 in order
to avoid that these minimal changes are published even later which were
ridiculous. After the revert of the d.legend changes I became careful in
sync'ing the release_branch.

At time 5.0.1 and the CVS experimental differ quite a bit, a somewhat
unpleasant situation. And understanding the 'diffs' between 5.0.1 exp and
release is getting really complicated now (at least for me).

It won't make much sense to build all the various binaries (waste of time),
this will become interesting only for 5.0.2.

Conclusion: Please *test* the current experimental version, e.g. r.mapcalc,
  e.g. the new datum transform feature etc. And please post your experiences
  here (or we never know whether a change was successful or not).

  Unfortunately most discussions on improvements (such as changing the
  raster storage to some useful directly structure, 5.1 issues etc.) die
  quickly without results.

Just my 0.02 Euro,

 Markus