[GRASS-dev] Launching GRASS 7 development

[Glynn Clements]

WolfgangZ wrote:

> > While we should concentrate now on getting out 6.3.0 (e.g.,
> > fixing issues indicated by Helena [1]), it is important
> > to start planning for a GRASS 7 dev-branch management.
> > 
> > For GRASS 6, we used for quite some time a mixed solution,
> > with new code stored in the grass6/ repository and linking
> > old, relevant code from grass[5]/ into it using some link
> > scripts.
> > 
> > I am not sure if we want the same for grass7/, too.
> > On the other hand, replicating code is impossible since
> > it won't be well maintained given our limited resources.
> > 
> > Thoughts also here?
> > 
> > Let's continue to maintain
> >  GRASS 7 ideas collection
> >  http://grass.gdf-hannover.de/wiki/GRASS_7_ideas_collection
> > 
> > Markus
> > 
> > [1] http://grass.itc.it/pipermail/grass-dev/2007-August/032579.html
> 
> I'm only a (non frequent) user of grass. But wouldn't it be nice to have 
>   grass7 with its own shell, to get rid of all these bash dependencies 
> which make many modules hardly portable (I would prefer a python like 
> shell).

The choice of shell must be up to the user. bash is a perfectly good
interactive shell; it just sucks (badly) as a programming language,
and will probably never be satisfactory on Windows.

For 7.x, my choice would be to require the use of Python for any
scripts which are part of GRASS, with the possible exception of any
critical scripts (e.g. Init.sh), where it may be worthwhile
maintaining at least minimal /bin/sh and cmd.exe versions, so that
users who (for whatever reason) do not have Python can still use most
of GRASS.

-- 
Glynn Clements <glynn at gclements.plus.com>