[GRASS-dev] Planning GRASS GIS 7.0.0RC1

[Markus Metz]

On Fri, Jan 16, 2015 at 1:27 PM, Moritz Lennert
<mlennert at club.worldonline.be> wrote:
> On 16/01/15 12:15, Martin Landa wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> 2015-01-16 12:13 GMT+01:00 Markus Metz <markus.metz.giswork at gmail.com>:
>>
>>> Can we please get RC2 out soon? In the last days I have fixed numerous
>>> bugs in the vector library and changed/restored the basic vector IO
>>> interface, it is now more similar to G6 and it needed some code clean
>>> up.
>
>
> Thanks for all this work ! Could you explain a bit more on what types of
> bugs this fixed ?

The first set of bugs was related to vector topology.

Bug 1 affected point-in-polygon tests, a basic geometry function. The
affected functions were Vect_point_in_area(),
Vect_point_in_area_outer_ring() and Vect_point_in_island() which
returned sometimes the wrong result (point outside instead of inside
or vice versa). This in turn affected the functions
Vect_attach_centroids(), Vect_attach_isle() and Vect_attach_isles()
which are needed to update topology when boundaries are added, deleted
or modified.

Bug 2 was in Vect_attach_centroids() andVect_attach_isles(). Centroids
and isles were not properly reattached when boundaries are added,
deleted or modified. These bugs still need to be fixed in G6.

Bugs 1 + 2 meant that (re)attaching centroids and isles during vector
modification was not working well, a fairly important feature for
modifying vector topology.

The modifications related to basic vector IO fixed some bugs
introduced in G7. Some functions were only working with topology, even
though equivalent functions not requiring topology are available. A
newly introduced test prevented access to the non-topological
variants. Further on, some function definitions were changed such that
new arguments were introduced that were not used/not needed. I have
syncronized the IO interface and updated the documentation. It is now
more similar to G6 and some functions have become non-topological
equivalents (interesting for large point clouds).

>
>>
>> I agree, but would suggest to wait at least one/two week(s), probably
>> more bugfixes will be collected.
>>
>
> As these seem to be modifications in fundamental library functions, I would
> plead for getting RC2 out more quickly than foreseen, i.e. I'd plead for 1
> week, not 2. That way these modifications will get a bit more testing before
> the final release.

I would plead for 1 day rather than 1 week.

>
> This is one example of why the proposed release procedure [1] contains this:
>
> "Any backports during the soft freeze should be announced on the developers
> mailing list with 24 hours advance to allow possible discussion."
>
> Maybe this should be extended to "Any backports or extensive bug fixes
> during..." ?
>
> If these changes had been announced, we could have delayed RC1 for a few
> days...

I discovered the bugs only in the last days and tried to get them
fixed as soon as possible, but some of the bugs were rather obscure
and I had no idea how quickly I would be able to find their reason and
fix them. The fixes are all thoroughly tested (I guess I have never
before tested vector topology so thoroughly...).

Markus M

>
> Moritz
>
> [1] http://trac.osgeo.org/grass/wiki/RFC/4_ReleaseProcedure