Releasing 2.20

[David Kastrup]

Ok folks,

tomorrow I am leaving for physical therapy.  I expect 3 weeks without
extension since the problematic areas have boiled down considerably in
the last two weeks already: swallowing is an ongoing nuisance, balance
is pretty well but looking back when bicycling still is precarious in
particular when something _is_ creeping up.  And temperature and pain
insensitivity on the left side and the mouth is something that also
requires adaption.  I am dealing reasonably well with my right hand
though using it in "independent parts" like for finicky mechanical feats
and for playing button accordion still shows some disposition for
cramping up.

But all in all I'm down to somewhat particular complaints so it's my
guess that 3 weeks of fulltime institutionalization will be sufficient
for getting things on track sufficiently in order to revert to parttime
afterwards.

A number of people have wished me well, voiced their concerns and sent
personal support.  Most of them I haven't answered individually and
apologize for that: I have a lot on my mind right now and the mind is
not all that well-focused yet (and honestly, it wasn't all that
well-focused before the stroke either).  So putting out individual and
appropriate responses well a bit through the cracks.

I have to see how much of a taxation therapy will turn out to be.  I got
my computer with me and I have installed a WWAN card and got some data
plan that should at least be good for email and issue updates.
Reception is pretty bad out in the woods here (I don't really have a
dedicated antenna but have instead sacrificed a Wifi antenna in the
laptop) but my expectation is that the institution will likely have a
cell tower close enough for Email to get in and out reliably enough.

So I should be able to do some reasonably straightforward work.

So how is it going to end up?  Barring objections, I'll probably branch
off a stable release branch early next week.  I'll have to see what to
cherry-pick into this branch as fixes proceed, and possibly what to
revert when it is not clear that functionality provided by recent
patches/changes can be considered stable in use and interface.

I don't think that we should need much more than the 3-week maturing
period corresponding to the expected physical therapy duration.

The alternative of releasing 2.18.3 since 2.18.2 does not even compile
using gcc-7 anymore is something I want to avoid.

So I'd rather pitch for a timely release of 2.20.  There have been a few
critical bugs flagged, however.  I'll take a look at them eventually but
if someone else has a good idea...

-- 
David Kastrup