Re: 4.0 release goals

[Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso]

On 1 November 2012 17:04, Philip Nienhuis <address@hidden> wrote:
> Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso-2 wrote
>> I would like to propose some rather ambitious goals for 4.0, and I
>> think we should be bold enough to use a major version number.
>>
>> In case you missed it in the help list, there's an interesting thread
>> about the GUI. Israel Herraiz forked it and stabilised it:
>>
>>
>> http://octave.1599824.n4.nabble.com/When-will-the-new-GUI-be-ready-tp4645798p4645846.html
>>
>> I would like to prioritise getting the GUI stabilised so we can start
>> contemplating making a release. I think our 4.0 release goals should
>> be:
>>
>>     - fltk enabled by default
>>     - Stable GUI
>>     - JIT compiling working
>>     - Windows and Mac OS X binaries
>>
>> We're already made many inroads into many of these goals. What do you
>> guys think, can we do it?
>
> IMO bug #34631 is a showstopper for Windows binaries. Gnuplot is also
> affected.

I disagree. It's not a bug that makes Octave useless for most Windows
users. It's bad, but most users don't regularly put 34 plots at once
on screen. I suggest keeping the discussion about this bug on the bug
report.

> As to the other features, I'd agree they should all be in a 4.0. Perhaps
> they can be integrated stepwise in a 3.8.x version.

I don't think there's much we can split off into a 3.8 version and
there are lots of major features that are coming in all at once,
particularly due to our GSoC students.

> I've seen the Octave on Windows 8 bug reports; but I think that shouldn't
> stop us from releasing 4.0.

No, but we need to have Windows binaries. When we make the big
announcement about 4.0 being released, I want to make sure Windows and
Mac OS X users can easily get Octave and run it. We should not start
blowing the trumpets until the binaries are ready. Especially since I
hope we can sell them freely at a pay-what-you-want scale.

Marketing. ;-)

- Jordi G. H.