[GRASS5] GRASS release policy needed

[Markus Neteler]

Hi developers and power users,

in June I made a try to release GRASS 6.0.1:
 http://grass.itc.it/pipermail/grass5/2005-June/018798.html

It turned out to be more complicated:
 http://grass.itc.it/pipermail/grass5/2005-July/thread.html#18820


Some observations

1. the bugtracker is full of (old) bugs
2. some of the bugs are known for years, but nobody is interested/able
   to fix them
3. some of the well know bugs have hold the intended release, but see 2.
4. While the release procedure is well documented in doc/howto_release.txt
   it is rather unclear when and under which conditions to release.


Opinion

We should implement a better release management.
I think that a long standing bug (see 2. above) should not hold a release
if noone offers to fix it in *reasonable* time (e.g., range of days).
Currently a couple of important fixes are still officially unpublished
such as (nearly randomly selected):

...
2005-05-10 11:58  radim
	* db/drivers/dbf/dbfexe.c: set columns to null before insert

2005-05-10 10:23  hamish
	* include/gisdefs.h: G_is_little_endian() was missing  [merge from
	  HEAD]

2005-04-29 11:37  radim
	* lib/db/: dbmi_client/start.c, dbmi_driver/driver.c: set correctly
	  GISRC mode

2005-04-29 10:12  radim
	* db/drivers/dbf/dbfexe.c: free statement  <- the famous LIDAR fix

2005-04-20 18:04  radim
	* lib/vector/Vlib/map.c: use original key also for index

2005-04-20 17:56  radim
	* lib/vector/Vlib/map.c: use original key

2005-03-31 18:48  radim
	* lib/vector/Vlib/intersect.c: segment and line intersection fix

2005-03-30 15:24  markus
	* lib/proj/... fix ETRS89 datum problems

2005-03-30 10:03  markus
	* raster/r.proj/: bilinear.c, bordwalk.c, cubic.c, main.c,
	  nearest.c: Morten Hulden...

2005-03-18 11:49  markus
	* lib/gis/make_loc.c: meter -> meters

2005-03-16 17:47  radim
	* lib/vector/Vlib/bridges.c: endless loop fix on zero length
	  boundaries

 2005-03-14 09:05  radim
	* vector/v.db.connect/main.c: field info fix
...


Currently we have 132 unreleased fixes in 6.0-CVS. IMHO a pity to not
make them available officially to the user community.


Just my 0.02 Eurocent

 Markus