[GRASS-dev] GRASS 6.4.0 release branch forthcoming

[Markus Neteler]

(cc Tim Sutton)

On Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 7:30 AM, Hamish <hamish_b at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Paul wrote:
>> I still think at some point a 6.4 release branch will be needed (when we
>> want to add new features) but I think we should put off creating it as
>> long as possible to reduce work. That's all - it depends on other
>> developers agreeing to restrict the changes we make to develbranch_6
>> for a while though.

There is an additional reason:
QGIS is going into feature freeze (they are already at 1.0 Preview 1).

I really want to avoid that they have to package 6.3.0 into it, just
because some GRASS developers are unhappy to see a 6.4.0
release branch.

> So my 2c plan of action would be to first finalize the module list (trac
> task #344) in the next week by bringing over addons destined for main.
> Once that is done we could tag a release_$DATE_grass_6_4_0RC1 directly
> from devbr6 and declare devbr6 to be temporarily in stability mode.

ok, let's go...

> Once r.out.gdal and other critical issues are dealt with, and the newly
> merged modules have had a chance to settle in (inevitable portability
> issues that pop up, etc)

[portability will only pop up if packaging is actually done which isn't
 for winGRASS unless a relbranch is there]

> we could tag another RC, say 3 weeks after RC1.
> We can decide at that point if RC2 will be the bugfix-only branch point
> or again tagged directly from devbr6. No way of knowing, but it seems
> reasonable to me to expect that RC2 could be the branch point.
>
> After the release branch point, backports to that branch will be naturally
> kept in check by the PITA that it is to sync things.

I am willing to help with backporting as before.

> A question remains for me wrt after 6.4.0 is released if grass7<->devbr6
> development will be kept in sync as it is now. (for possible 6.5/6)
> I'll defer an opinion about that until the time of the last 6.4.0 RC.

Me, too. We can decide that later.

Markus