[Qgis-developer] [Fwd: Re: [Qgis-user] Poll on website]

[Martin Dobias]

Hi,

looking at the poll it seems that 1.0.x isn't *that* popular among
users. Majority of use the last version or even the bleeding edge
compiled from source (although the poll is biased towards unstable
versions thanks to our testers).

My biggest concern is about the naming: calling 1.x versions
"unstable" seems unfair to me. Any greater features are developed and
tested in branches and merged once they're ready. So the trunk is +-
stable and virtually ready for a release at any time. That's why I
would prefer to mark also 1.x releases "stable" or avoid
stable/unstable completely. Every 1.x release brings many new features
that make 1.0 look old :-)

There's also a matter of promotion: currently the QGIS home page
states just under the big logo there's version 1.0.2. But there's also
a newer version that many users probably just don't know about! And
sincerely, the "unstable" version doesn't sound like a choice for
production use. That's maybe also the reason why there are some people
prefering 1.0.x releases.

On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 6:26 PM, Paolo Cavallini<cavallini at faunalia.it> wrote:
> Jürgen E. Fischer ha scritto:
>
>> But I also believe that any manpower spend on 1.0 is mostly wasted - no matter
>> how tiny.

That's my opinion too. And if there are companies/organizations which
really need to have a version with long term support, they should
take care of backporting the fixes from the trunk. For a decent
backport, it's really necessary to also compile and test it, not just
commit the backport - waste of our time.

>>> so I would now vote for releasing frequently a new version
>>> from trunk, when we reach a general consensus that the current trunk is
>>> stable enough to be released (as it happens now, IMHO).
>>
>> And I think that's already the plan.  1.2 will be released when the
>> symbology-ng & labeling stuff was merged.
>
> Why don't we release another version *before* this? It is possible that
> major merges will cause some instability, therefore pushing forward 1.2.

Recently I've been wondering what will be the best time for new
release (1.2). In about two weeks we're going to finish the
qgis-mapper project and there are some more functionality besides new
symbology and labeling I'd like to put into trunk: most importantly
OpenStreetMap provider+plugin, topology checking plugin and vector
features caching. But that's probably too much for one release... So
one possibility would be to release 1.2 with just some of the features
and get the rest into 1.3. Opinions?

Martin