[GRASS-dev] libgrass+grass-gui?

[Hamish]

Paolo wrote:
> It does not, but splitting development in 3 branches would
> allow easier release of each.

I see where you are coming from, but to me it becomes a bit of
a "divided we fall" situation.

As the GUIs have developed in tandem we've added little library
and module functions along the way when some variable needed
to be exposed or some function deineractivated (if that word
makes sense). Development is not completely independent,
especially if you consder the mixed components like wxVdigit
and wxNviz.

> For instance there is a critical bug in one of the GUIs,
> but CLI is not affected, then libgrass can be released,

Currently we have pretty much a max of 2 people working on the
GUI at any one time. With the current release stalled primarily
due to GUI on Windows issues it forces me to at least look at
that code, even though I usually don't use either the GUIs or
Windows myself. If it were separate that incentive wouldn't be
there and the gui devels might get lonely and discouraged.

> and other apps (including QGIS) can rely on a stable release.

? AFAIK they can and do rely on the releasebranch_6_4, which
should be stable enough not to be sensitive to this issue.

> The basic idea is that CLI and GUI have different speed of
> development and diffwerent stability issues and requirement,
> so when it is possible to allow different speed of release,
> this *seems* to me a good option.

I worry that with a multi-tier system the lesser developed
components would be further neglected by the other devels.

The GUI is not-scriptable so the UI parts of it can change
quite a bit within a stable release cycle without being limited
by the preserve-backwards compatibility rule.


regards,
Hamish