[GRASS5] GRASS 5.0.1 released

[Markus Neteler]

On Tue, Jan 28, 2003 at 07:46:19PM +0100, Bernhard Reiter wrote:
> It was always the idea to stablise the 5.0 HEAD branch,
> and release 5.0.1 from a fresh release branch.
> We still should do this.

This is probably to late. Do you mean 5.0.2?

> Thus 5.0.1 from the old release branch was just intermediate
> and for critical bugs.

Several important bugfixes didn't reach 5.0.1 due to the restrictions.

> Thus we should go for 5.0.2 from 5.0 CVS HEAD.

Right.
 
> And it is okay to fix real non-critical bugs for a 
> in a 5.0.x release, but not if a release branch has been created.

In my opinion we should avoid subsubversions such as
5.0.0.x.

> So if all bugs are fixed, make a release branch for 5.0.2.

Ok, who is doing that? Please keep in mind that this reuqires
quite some work and time. Volunteers... ;-)

> On this release branch, please only fix critical_bugs.
> 
> On Tue, Jan 28, 2003 at 05:01:20PM +0100, Markus Neteler wrote:
[...]
> > [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
> >  ]
> 
> The rule to only fix release critical bugs on a release branch
> in itself is fine. 
> We just have to go for a fresh release from the CVS HEAD sooner
> which should be about bug fixes and minor feature enhancements only
> anyway.

This is not clear to me, sorry. When creating a new branch from HEAD,
all fixes including new features such as the long awaited datum
transformation etc will reach it (or not?). Or do we count all
as bug fixes and minor feature enhancements?
 
> > 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. 
> 
> Well that should be fine as 5.0 CVS HEAD continued development.
> Now that has to be made stable.
> 
> > 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).
> 
> You mean the 5.0 CVS HEAD. :)
Yes.

> That is not entirely experimental as this 5.0 CVS tree
> should be the more stable CVS tree.
> 5.1 CVS should be real experimental.
> 
> >   Unfortunately most discussions on improvements (such as changing the
> >   raster storage to some useful directly structure, 5.1 issues etc.) die
> >   quickly without results.
> 
> This mostly means that the improvement can be delayed,
> because most people don't care. 

Here we have to distinguish between
 - developers who don't have time or who don't care
 - users who care and are not able to compile CVS HEAD. Especially
   for the users the slow release frequency is a problem:

   E.g. r.mapcalc was fixed weeks ago as well as NVIZ for tcl8.4. But
   only a few people can benefit from this bugfix.

This problem we should resolve soon,

 Markus