MapServer 5.0 release plan

[Steve Lime]

RFC 19 is not far off, just need to sit down and finish the friggin' thing. I figure I could be
done in about a day if I could find a full day to work. 

With the impact of RFC 24 I was sitting on my hands a bit figuring it would be easier for 
me to interject my changes (numerous but localized) into the code once RFC 24 is committed. 
Sounds like there is still some discussion going on w/regards to that one.

There are a couple of more smaller RFC's I'll be working on in addition to the GD/AGG stuff.
One to unify OWS and MapServer notions of an extent should be relatively simple. Another
to fix a few terminology issues related to ...SCALE and TRANSPARENCY keywords. And yet
another to alter the way JOINs are referenced in template results (would like to switch to
a more recognizable syntax with a . operator instead of an underscore).

Beyond those there are a ton of bugs and minor feature requests out there (some apply to
4.10.x too). Would be helpful to find out if there are others interested in picking up some
of these.

IRC meetings sound fine, I might suggest biweekly to get/keep things moving.

Steve


>>> On 3/19/2007 at 10:55 AM, in message <45FEB26A.4040605 at mapgears.com>, Daniel
Morissette <dmorissette at MAPGEARS.COM> wrote:
> Howard Butler wrote:
>> 
>> My opinion is that we let AGG support hold up the 5.0 release until it 
>> is workable enough to be out there in the wild.  Premium cartographic 
>> output is enough of a draw (sorry) for folks coming to MapServer that 
>> they will be willing to put up with its quirks to get it.  I'd also like 
>> to see the dust settle on RFCs 19 and 24, because IMO a major version 
>> release is the one time I think we can get away with it.
>> 
> 
> Makes sense. I think it would be nice if the developers working on those 
> items could give us an idea of when they think those pieces will be 
> ready for a release.
> 
> 
>> I like these dates as good targets.  I think to get serious about a 5.0 
>> release we should start having at least monthly IRC developer meetings 
>> to prioritize stuff and see where everyone is with their developments.
>> 
> 
> Agreed. I have been following the MapGuide IRC meetings while I was the 
> MapGuide incubation mentor and found that it's great for a project to 
> bring all the developers in the same room every once in a while. Even 
> when there is not much to discuss on the agenda, there are always useful 
> discussions that come up when everybody is in the room and make the 1 
> hour meeting worthwhile.
> 
> I could take the lead on organizing monthly IRC meetings unless someone 
> else wants to do it.
> 
> 
>> re: #2 Does this happen at the mapserver, GDAL/OGR, or Proj level?
> 
> Not decided yet. The first step of this task is to look at the 
> possibiliy of doing the EPSG lookup optimizations either at the 
> MapServer or at the PROJ level, and then choose the option that makes 
> the most sense. Of course doing it at the PROJ level would be preferable 
> if possible since the result would be reusable by any code using PROJ 
> and not just MapServer.
> 
>> re: #4 Would libxml2 be in the cards for this, or would we continue on 
>> the current path?
> 
> Ehrrrr... um... have you seen how sunny it is today?  ;) ;)
> 
> (I'll keep a note about possibly converting the code to libxml2, but the 
> initial plan was only to add WMS 1.3.0 support on top of the currently 
> supported versions... and using the current printf-based approach)
> 
>> re: #6.  IIRC, the OGR C API doesn't have full support for the styling 
>> stuff, which was one of the things holding up our migration to 
>> mapogr.c.  Will there be some changes in the OGR C API as well?
>> 
> 
> I will also make any required changes to the OGR C API to make this work 
> (and submit RFCs to GDAL's PSC as needed).
> 
> Daniel