[Geotools-devel] Update policy questions

[Jody G. <jga...@re...>]

Okay I know 1.5 bs bs bs 5.0 is only days old at this time - but they 
are changing their release policy:

See: 
http://weblogs.java.net/blog/mreinhold/archive/2004/09/tigers_and_must.html

This was the worthwhile bit:

> *There won't be any more maintenance releases.* Starting with Tiger 
> (5.0) there won't be any more releases the size of 1.4.1 and 1.4.2, 
> /i.e./, with 1500-2000 bug fixes. There still might be a release 
> called "5.1", but it will just be a special update release.

Our usual idea has us holding off to 5.1 - it now looks like they don't 
plan to do this anymore.
My I make an alternate recomendation - even if I don't like it.

Perhaps we should change our policy to wait until a J2EE release is 
available; this suxs for my project (where I would really like to use 
5.0 language features in improving geotools). But J2EE represents a 
really good second opionion from Sun that thier JRE is ready for primetime.

What would this mean for a timeline? Well they are only starting on J2EE 
work now - and frankly a lot of the language features (like metadata 
support) has lots of consequences for J2EE (think EJBs for instance). I 
would guess next summer for a RC and a year for the release.  Darn that 
is probably too long.

An alternative would be to have geotools spawn a point release 2.2 to 
take on the work timed to complete with the forth dot release or 
something. Although frankly many projects will have to stay behind at 
the Java 1.4 level - is this worth making a Geotools 3 over?

Something for people to talk about on Monday.

Jody
BTW: My project is waiting on a Mac release of 1.5 rather than J2EE 
(wonder who will wait longer)