[GRASS5] GRASS development roadmap proposal

[Markus Neteler]

On Thu, Jul 17, 2003 at 04:36:01PM +0200, Bernhard Reiter wrote:
> Thanks for the proposal, it is a good idea to work on a roadmap.
> 
> On Thu, Jul 17, 2003 at 12:33:43PM +0200, Markus Neteler wrote:
> > 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.
> 
> We need to think in development lines 
> or as I often write series. 
> Your proposal below is not written to show the development lines.

[Maybe also due to the ASCII limit.]

Line 1: 5.0.x
    -> only bugfixes, no new features, almost completed

Line 2: 5.3.x
    -> introducing datum transformation, few new features
       almost completed, but needs more testing
    --> stable will be 5.4.x

---------------------
Line 3: 5.7.x
    -> introducing new vector format etc
       work in progress
    --> stable will be 5.8.x, leading to 6.x

 
> Certainly we should have 5.0.3 as bug-fix releases.
> We might also have further 5.0.x releases which IMO 
> should also be bug fix releases.

This is what I tried to propose.

> > Two problems have to be addresses:
> > - in a 5.0.x version we should not introduce
> >   datum transformation as the results will be
> >   different
> 
> I did not follow the datum discussions in detail.
> What do you mean with: The results will be different?

We should not have 5.0.2 without datum transformation and
5.0.3 with datum transformation as the same commands (*.proj)
will end with different results. This means that the maps
are shifted up to some hundred meters. Subversions must
behave the same.
 
> > - we should release datum transformation as soon as
> >   possible as it is crucial for GIS data processing.
> 
> Another idea would be to make in an experiemental add-on package
> to 5.0.x if the datum transformation support is ready for this.

Yes, but with a different version name. Otherwise there will be
too much confusion in the user community ("why is my map
shifted...").
 
> It is clear that the 5.0.x serious has to transform into the
> 5.1.x serious which then transforms into 5.2.x at some point
> where 5.0.x support hopefully can be discontinued.

In general that the idea.
 
> The renaming part (5.0 HEAD -> 5.3.0 and 5.1.0 -> 5.7.0) suggested
> will cause confusion. I advise against it.

So please make a better proposal.

 
Markus