[GRASS5] Let's release 5.4 asap

[Markus Neteler]

Hi developers,

I still didn't read all the messages from the last weeks
but would like to suggestion to get out 5.4 as soon as possible
(means within days/weeks time frame). There is not much point
in not releasing it for two main reasons:

- 5.0 is now really outdated

- In the community 5.0 is considered to be stable and so it is
   heavily used (we saw that in Bangkok). People complained about 
  problems which we already solved month/years ago. On the other
  hand it is pretty difficult to convince them to change to
  5.3 as they say "why is it indicated as development version then?".
  Software can always be better. Waiting with a 5.4 release doesn't
  make sense as open things are not going to be solved in the
  near future (shared libs on Mac etc). So, please, let's get 5.4
  out and "downgrade" 5.0 in it's importance.

  To have 3 versions on the web site is considered to be very
  confusing (I heard that many times the last weeks).

Putting much efforts into 5.3 (tcltkgrass etc) might not be worth
the time spent. We have 5.7 and we should concentrate on this version.

So, what's holding a 5.4.0 release? Any important problems which
will be fixed *soon*? Let me cite these mails:

 http://grass.itc.it/pipermail/grass5/2004-July/014954.html
 http://grass.itc.it/pipermail/grass5/2004-July/014955.html
 "my plan is that when 5.3 can be compiled with shared libraries on all 
  supported platforms, we should make this the default and release it as 
  5.3.1"

We are probably years away from that due to personal time constraints.
Instead of holding the 5.4 release for further month/years, we should
get it out. Once the shared lib problems are solved we can publish the
next subversion.

Markus