[GRASS5] GRASS 5.0.1 released

[Markus Neteler]

On Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 01:13:44PM +0100, Bernhard Reiter wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 11:30:59AM +0100, Markus Neteler wrote:
> > On Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 11:06:42AM +0100, Bernhard Reiter wrote:
> > > On Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 10:44:05AM +0100, Markus Neteler wrote:
> > > > On Tue, Jan 28, 2003 at 07:46:19PM +0100, Bernhard Reiter wrote:
[...]
> > > > > 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.
> > > 
> > > Well if they are really "important" 
> > > as a maintainer you could declare them critical.
> > 
> > Please note that I am *one of* the maintainers. 
> 
> Somebody should be the last to make or finalise decisions.
> For GRASS 5.x that certainly is you. :)

Mmh, you are maybe expecting too much from me. Do evaluate every
change is not possible for me, neither by time nor by programming
knowledge.
Then it sometimes happened that my personal opinion and opinions of
other developers which good programming background differ (why not!).
In this case I trust them. But not always there is a result, there
are many open issues in the mailing list archives.

[...]
> > > that should only exist a short period of time
> > > and only get critical bugfixes.
> > > It contains all bug fixes and minor feature enhancements
> > > which were done after the last release branch was branched.
> > 
> > We should be careful with opening and closing branches. 
> 
> A branch is "declared" closed, not physically closed.
> The commits should be watched by developers,

I am only aware of one/two developer(s) + me who are actively following
this commit mailing list and sometimes comment on submissions.
That's not sufficient to keep control.

> and reverted if they go on the wrong branch.
Who will do that?
 
> > Once we already had come confusion in 2001:
> > http://grass.itc.it/pipermail/grass5/2001-August/000701.html
> > when two branches were used in parallel.
> 
> That was a special condition araising 
> because we were not watching closely
> and developers did not know.

Well, the current situation is rather identical, as only a very few
developers watch the commits. IMHO that "special condition" could occur
easily again.

Also several developers with granted CVS write access do not use it (for
personal or technical or other reasons), I am mostly committing for them
(sometimes also Glynn). That means that only a few contributors actively
work with CVS. One reason I have heard from a few potential CVS writers
is that they found CVS already too complicated or had too many troubles
to set up the ssh-CVS etc. When now increasing the frequency of closing
and opening new release branches, these potential CVS writers will probably
not start to actively use CVS.
We should keep things simple and clearly arranged.

Again just my personal impression,

 Markus