Re: Are we (nearly) ready for 3.4 yet?

[Michael D Godfrey]

On 12/15/2010 02:06 AM, John W. Eaton wrote:
> Looking back in my mail archive, I see we discussed releasing 3.4
> about a year ago, then again in July, then yet again in September.  So
> now you must be thinking that if I start to talk about a release, it
> is probably just talk.  But really, I would like to make a release
> relatively soon.  I think it is way overdue.
I agree that a release very soon would be appropriate.
>   We are seeing a lot of
> reports for bugs that have already been fixed.  We have a lot of new
> features that people would probably like to be using.  So what
> important things need to happen before we can create the 3.4.0
> tarball?  My unordered list is
>
>    * Take one last shot at editing and updating the NEWS file.
>
>    * Update copyright years.
>
>    * Add @DOCSTRING entries (and more descriptive info if possible) for
>      all functions that are currently missing from the manual.
>
> Some things that would be nice to have but not essential if they can't
> or don't happen:
>
>    * Other documentation edits/improvements.
>
>    * Reduce the number of open bug reports.  I'm not concerned with
>      trying to close all or even most of the current set of reports
>      before the release, but we should try to fix critical problems,
>      regressions, or problems that many people will likely notice.
>      Browsing the list of open reports, it looks like many are graphics
>      related, and then there are a few obscure problems or feature
>      requests.  Are there any absolutely critical bugs that must be
>      fixed before a release happens?  Maybe the problem with indexed
>      assignment and empty arrays (bug #31287).  Are there any critical
>      plotting problems?
>
>    * Merge John Swensen's imread/imwrite changes.
>
>    * Make FLTK plotting work well enough to use by default.  I doubt
>      this is a reasonable goal for a time horizon of a few weeks, so I
>      don't expect it.  But I think this should be a high priority for
>      the next stable release after 3.4.
My experience is that plotting is in quite good shape in FLTK.
Printing is not.  The various timing-dependent failures are
a serious nuisance.  They can be worked around by only doing
a few print commands "at a time."  But it would be a big help
if this could be resolved before the release.  If this cannot get
done, a release with warning about FLTK print problems would
be OK, I think.
> Anything else?
I think that the current system is very much improved over the
current release, so lets do the release by setting a "final cutoff"
for patches that will be accepted for the release, and do it.
> I could also list a lot of features that I would like to have, but
> none are likely to happen in a few weeks, so it would probably be best
> to not delay a release much longer.  We could do that forever (as it
> seems we already have).
>
> Comments?
>
> jwe