Revised 4.8 release plan

[Steve Lime]

There are no new parameters, it's more a change in behavior with existing
parameters. That is, ANTIALIAS TRUE and WIDTH > 1 gets you meaningful
output. Right now that combination has no effect. The problem is making
sure everything works with all combinations of image depth and marker
type.

I'd prefer to see a beta 3, even if only for a week, then the release candidate.

I don't think the website needs to wait for anything, if it's ready then go...

Steve

>>> Sean Gillies <sgillies at FRII.COM> 12/12/05 5:52 PM >>>
On Dec 12, 2005, at 4:15 PM, Daniel Morissette wrote:

> With all the chaos of the last few weeks, we are a bit behind relative
> to our original 4.8 release schedule: we should have had our release
> candidate last Friday and our final release this Friday.
>
> We may have to delay the release by a few days, but I would rather not
> delay it later than Dec 23rd because after that we get into the  
> holidays
> and it becomes really hard to get a hold of people. I also know  
> that the
> new website team has been working real hard to try to get things ready
> in time for our initial planned date, so I would not want to ruin  
> their
> efforts.
>
> So I would like to propose the following revised plan:
>
> 4.8.0-rc1 on Thursday Dec 15th
> 4.8.0 final on Thursday Dec 22nd
>
> Are there major outstanding bugs that you were actively working on and
> that would prevent us from proceeding with those dates?
>
> Also, Steve is working on a "fuzzy brush" last minute addition that
> would allow producing antialiased thick lines and he would like to get
> it into this release. I know that this is clearly a new feature and
> should not be allowed after the feature freeze, but the addition is
> relatively straightforward and would constitute a major enhancement  
> for
> this release. Are there any objections to exceptionally breaking the
> rule and allowing this last minute addition knowing that it is a very
> localized change and has very little chance of breaking anything else
> (just a new function to create fuzzy brushes and probably one new
> mapfile parameter)?
>
> Steve: would you be able to get your change in by Wednesday?
>
> Daniel
> -- 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
>   Daniel Morissette               dmorissette at dmsolutions.ca
>   DM Solutions Group              http://www.dmsolutions.ca/
> ------------------------------------------------------------

Daniel,

I'm OK with the revision, but have some reservations about the fuzzy  
brush feature. Adding a new mapfile parameter can be disruptive  
because then you've gotta update the swig docs, update the mapfile  
save/writing code, update msCopyStyle, etc. This weekend I found that  
msCopyStyle currently segfaults in a test that has been passing for  
several releases, probably due to some subtle change in style or  
class initialization. There are also a number of new memory leaks in  
and around classObj.

On the other hand, it does seem like a good feature. I'm for it if  
all the side effects are accounted for.

Sean