New stable CVS branch for version 4.6 on SourceForge

[sfeam (E. Merritt) <eam...@gm...>]

Hi all,

Since patchlevel 4 is the last release planned for the version 4.4 series,
I have created a new branch for development of version 4.6.  You can check
it out using the commands below.  Or you may have another set of commands
that you prefer.  Anyhow the branch name is branch-4-6-stable
    
cvs -d:pserver:ano...@gn...:/cvsroot/gnuplot \
     login
cvs -z3 -d:pserver:ano...@gn...:/cvsroot/gnuplot \
     checkout -r branch-4-6-stable -P gnuplot

I suggest that we follow the same general procedure as we did during
the period leading up to the 4.4 release:

- Bug fixes should be applied to both the main branch (currently 4.5)
  and to the 4.6.alpha source in branch-4-6-stable.  Since these are
  currently identical, there should be no problem with applying the
  same patch to both.

- New features should be added to the development branch *only*.
  If the feature proves to be trouble-free, we can decide later to 
  backport it to the 4.6 release series.

- I hope to keep on a roughly 6 month release schedule, meaning that
  version 4.6.0 would be officially released sometime in the spring.

- When 4.6 is released, the version number of the main development
  branch will be bumped to 4.7.

- Last time we put out a testing version (release candidate) prior to
  releasing 4.4.0. There were some fairly serious problems picked up
  by people testing the release candidate.   But recently we have been
  getting a lot of feedback from people using the development version
  itself,  much more then we had prior to releasing 4.4.  So we may
  not need a separate pre-release testing version this time.
  What do you think?

The option is still on the table to name the next release 5.0 rather
than 4.6.  If you care, please speak up.

		Ethan