[GRASS-dev] GRASS 6.4.0 release branch forthcoming

[Paul Kelly]

On Thu, 23 Oct 2008, Glynn Clements wrote:

> Paul Kelly wrote:
>
>>>> I'd be more concerned about 6.3.1, as there have been a fair number of
>>>> straightforward bug-fixes since 6.3.0.
>>>
>>> Well, I know easily 50 fixes which I have NOT backported to 6.3.svn, knowing,
>>> that 6.4.0.RCX is forthcoming soon. Many are related to portability, too.
>>> So I do think that we need a 6.4.0 the next months (at least I won't go through
>>> all those fixes to check if they are present in 6.3.svn - even the code layout
>>> isn't reindented).
>>
>> I'm not sure if this is what Glynn meant, but I ask - why does 6.3.1 have
>> to be released from the 6.3.0 release branch? Why not just release 6.3.1
>> straight from develbranch_6? I really don't see the need to always have a
>> release branch for releases. IMHO it slows things down and is a major
>> impediment to "release early, release often" working.
>
> Any release from develbranch_6 will contain incompatible changes, so
> it should be called 6.4.0, not 6.3.1.

Ah OK now I see. Also as Helena said in private mail now that 6.4 is "out 
of the bag", so to speak, because 6.3.0 was released from its own branch 
and develbranch_6 was renamed to 6.4-SVN, users would see any 6.3.x 
versions released as being not up to date because they are aware that 6.4 
is somehow available.

Not saying 6.3.1 from the 6.3 release branch is a bad idea, but I doubt 
anyone will have the motivation to merge the bugfixes and prepare a 
release. So I feel there is no real option but to go straight to 6.4.0. 
I'm still not sure if we need a release branch though.

Paul