[GRASS-dev] 6.4.0 blocker bugs

[Barton Michael]

Greetings from remote parts of China.

I agree with all about releasing 6.4. 

As it stands now 6.4 is much more stable and usable than 6.2.3. wxnviz and wxdigit are experimental for this release, so we shouldn't worry about them too much. The TclTk versions of both work well. 

1+ for release as quickly as possible.

Michael
____________________
C. Michael Barton
Director, Center for Social Dynamics & Complexity 
Professor of Anthropology, School of Human Evolution & Social Change
Arizona State University

voice: 	480-965-6262 (SHESC), 480-727-9746 (CSDC)
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www: www.public.asu.edu/~cmbarton, http://csdc.asu.edu










On Jul 6, 2010, at 10:34 AM, grass-dev-request at lists.osgeo.org wrote:

> Date: Mon, 5 Jul 2010 22:34:23 -0400
> From: Helena Mitasova <hmitaso at unity.ncsu.edu>
> Subject: Re: [GRASS-dev] 6.4.0 blocker bugs
> To: Glynn Clements <glynn at gclements.plus.com>
> Cc: Markus Metz <markus.metz.giswork at googlemail.com>,   Martin Landa
>       <landa.martin at gmail.com>,       GRASS developers list
>       <grass-dev at lists.osgeo.org>
> Message-ID: <BBA240B3-11DC-40AB-B670-D58A8063E478 at unity.ncsu.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
> 
> 
> On Jul 5, 2010, at 5:11 PM, Glynn Clements wrote:
> 
>> 
>> Markus Neteler wrote:
>> 
>>>>>> time to get out 6.4.0final :-)
>>>>> 
>>>>> Please...
>>>> 
>>>> one huge +1 ...
>>> 
>>> I learned that we should await the ctypes port to get rid of SWIG?
>> 
>> SWIG is only used within GRASS for the wxGUI vdigit and nviz modules.
>> It's also used to generate wrappers for programmers who wish to access
>> the libraries directly, but these aren't used by any part of GRASS.
>> 
>> I suggest disabling all of this in the final release. The vdigit and
>> nviz modules don't work on Windows, and aren't particularly robust on
>> other platforms (and being loaded in-process means that any problems
>> affect the GUI as a whole, not just the vdigit/nviz modules).
> 
> Glynn,
> I assume you are talking about wxnviz here, not the TclTk based nviz
> which runs on windows just fine?
> 
> I agree that it is really important to get 6.4 final released, especially given
> that FOSS4G in Barcelona is coming soon
> 
> Helena
>> 
>> The SWIG wrappers for the libraries are barely usable and are planned
>> to be replaced, so we shouldn't be encouraging their use.
>> 
>> IOW:
>> 
>> 1. The "swig" directory should be removed from DIRS in the top-level
>> Makefile, so it isn't built (unless the user builds it manually).
>> 
>> 2. Official binaries shouldn't use --with-python; this will prevent
>> the vdigit and nviz modules from being built.
>> 
>> 3. Optionally back-port the ctypes wrappers (lib/python/ctypes). Even
>> if this doesn't work (fails to build or generates broken wrappers), it
>> shouldn't break anything which would otherwise work.
>> 
>> 4. Optionally back-port the ctypes-based nviz module (wxnviz.py). This
>> has most of the same issues as nviz/vdigit (i.e. the GRASS libraries
>> are being accessed directly from the GUI process, so a segfault or
>> G_fatal_error() will kill the GUI), but not all of them.
>> 
>> 4b. Alternatively, back-port the changes but not wxnviz.py itself. The
>> result is equivalent to just building --without-python (i.e. the GUI
>> will try to import the wxnviz module, fail, and warn that it's
>> disabled), except that the user can drop in wxnviz.py from SVN if they
>> want to try it out.
>> 
>> --
>> Glynn Clements <glynn at gclements.plus.com>
>> _______________________________________________
>> grass-dev mailing list
>> grass-dev at lists.osgeo.org
>> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
> 
>