[GRASS-dev] default GUI

Hamish hamish_b at yahoo.com
Tue Sep 22 06:13:49 EDT 2009


Glynn:
> > What's the timescale for a 6.4.0 release?

Martin:
> I don't think that there is enough time to do that.

I agree. Last few fixes then let's release.

> First 6.4.0 RC 12/2008, the last (RC5) 7/2009, now we
> have end of September - it's seems to me as very very
> long time for RC stage.

granted.

but just think of what a nicer result it is and how much better
a product we will ship. for many users (wingrass) this will
be their first try with GRASS. if it came off as buggy and
half-baked they would think the whole package is like that
and not just a few glitches in the MS-facade.

I'm really happy to have the python libraries in good shape now;
if we released in April we would have been stuck with the old..
Same with a number of core module bugs on WinGrass (eg v.?.ogr).


> I would be happy to see 6.4.0 out

I think you speak for all of us.

A blocker-blocker is the WinGrass 'g.version -c' bug. We can't
release without an in-program way to show the user the license.
AFAIK only the gis.m help->about gets to to the GPL; the command
line and wx help->about are both broken in different ways.

the other RC bugs are fewer and fewer, some are fixed awaiting
confirmation,
  https://trac.osgeo.org/grass/report/13

(I can finish off the rel. ann. in a day once it looks imminent)


> and discuss if we would be able to change release politics
> (releases more often, less RCs, etc.)

ok this one went really quite slow but we all had a rather
busy year AFAICT. I agree that faster RCs would be nice, but
where we really needed them (wingrass), when the RCs started
to fall out of date Colin and JEF have both provided interim
svn snapshots. I am not sure about more or fewer RCs, I think
those speak for themselves if they are ready or not. (rc5 ready
on *nix for a long time; but not ms-win, unsurprising) For my
2c I am happy with the philosophy and the especially the result.

The downside with it taking so long is that the powerusers/devels
are no longer using the release version for their day-to-day,
and so the best testers/fixers are not looking at the release
version, focus moves away, and old bugs stagnate. C'est la vie.


fwiw, I forget how long all the 5.0.0pre releases took, I'm
pretty sure it was a bunch more than a year. And 5.1/5.7->6.0
was what, like 3 years at least? 5.0->5.4 3yrs? Hey, we are
gaining speed! We could probably plot something meaningless
from the news history page there :)


> Initially I was not thinking about wxGUI as default for
> 6.4.0. Few days ago some of devs/users started speaking
> about that.

May I humbly suggest to make that a release goal for 6.4.1 in
~two months time. Hopefully with all C++/wx issues solved and
it will have had lots more testing. 'til then Wx will be heavily
advertised with this release & so should see plenty of exposure.


regards,
Hamish



      


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