[GRASS5] GRASS 5.0.3 released

[Thierry Laronde]

On Fri, Nov 07, 2003 at 01:02:18PM +0100, Bernhard Reiter wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 07, 2003 at 12:22:23PM +0100, Thierry Laronde wrote:
> > 
> > I think you took the correct decision to enforce us to work on 5.7++ ;)
> 
> GRASS has quite a conservative user base.
> That is something that always was a concern for Markus, too.
> Beside that the code base is gigantic.

It is perhaps too late but it took me some time (and the great help of
Hamish's advices) to understand the organization of code/CVS.

May I say that, for me, now, the simplest way (separating difficulties)
should be first to stop indeed _all_ additions to 5.x and that 5.4 will
be GRASS 5.0 slimmed down to the strict necessary (deleting all the
unneeded code, chosing one between multiple alternatives, putting in
libraries shared code etc [eventually concentrating all the bugs in
one place] ; that is cleaning the code without changing
things) and that once this is done, once the code is reorganized make
the jump to 6.0 alpha aka present 5.7.

Mixing huge internal changes (new vector format) with an absolutely
needed cleaning of the code will be an absolute pain and indeed delaying
the releases (the separate actions are possible ; mixing the two is
problematic).

And please note that if we all (even if we are not very numerous)
concentrate first in the gamma/gold 5 "release" this can be done in
say a quarter. We need a muscle less unsaturated fat GRASS to take lean
on for further jumps.

Just my 2 cents.
-- 
Thierry Laronde (Alceste) <tlaronde at polynum.org>
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C