[GRASS5] GRASS development roadmap proposal

[Markus Neteler]

Users regularly ask (me) about the upcoming GRASS
releases and their features. To help them and also us
we should define a roadmap which also solves to some
extent the versioning problem.

Two problems have to be addresses:
- in a 5.0.x version we should not introduce
  datum transformation as the results will be
  different
- we should release datum transformation as soon as
  possible as it is crucial for GIS data processing.


Here a proposal which tries to minimize the version
naming problems:

stable                    experimental
-----------------------+------------------------
5.0.2 (current)           5.1.0 (current)
-----------------------+------------------------
5.0.3                     5.3.0 (CVS 5.0 HEAD)
- bugfixes for 5.0.2      - datum transformation
- G3D activated           - improved NVIZ
                          - r.terraflow (C++)
-----------------------+------------------------
5.4.0                     [no more exp development]
- bugfixes for 5.3.0
=======================+========================
                          5.7.0 (was: 5.1.0 renamed)
                          - new 2D/3D vector
                          - DBMS support
                          - keep sites format [1]
                          - new Makefile system
                          - initial cleanup libs
                          - initial code inline docs
                            (doxygen)
-----------------------+------------------------
5.8.0                     5.9.0
- bugfixes for 5.7.0      - eliminate sites [2]
                          - improve raster format
                          - improve image processing
-----------------------+------------------------
6.0.0                     6.1.0
- bugfixes for 5.9.0
- includes now 
   - new vector
   - DBMS support
   - polished libs
   - inline code docs
   - improved raster
   - etc.
-----------------------+------------------------

[1] to keep the sites modules for a while seems to be
    necessary as we do not have the resources to upgrade
    all sites functionality to vector in short term.
    No efforts should be invested to improve the sites.
[2] point data are treated as vector nodes with following
    advantages:
    - spatial index for speed, DBMS, NULL support


Markus