Aw: Version 5.2.8 / Development status / Release plans

[Bastian M. <bma...@we...>]

> Von: "Ethan Merritt (UW)" <me...@uw...>
(snip)
>
> However I don't think the current state of git tip is appropriate
> for a stable release.  There are a lot of changes; some of the new
> features have barely been tested, others have been blocked
> out but only partially implemented.  Therefore I propose to base
> the 5.4 branch off 5.2 rather than off the development branch.
> My thought is to back-port some of the better-tested features
> from the development branch into 5.4.  Some obvious ones are
> 	Unicode escape sequences
>     "set table separator <char>"
>     2D plot style "with arrows"
>     3D plot styles "with boxes", "with circles"

>
> If back-porting individual features turns out to be too difficult,
> the fallback plan is be to re-label current git tip as "5.4"
> and start a new development branch as we have done in the past.
> But I am hopeful that the change to using git will make
> back-porting easier.
>
> Your thoughts?
>
> 	Ethan
>

Changing the development model that late in the process is not
a good idea in my opinion. 5.2 and master have diverged very seriously.

Here's the diffstat summary between master and the 5.2 branchpoint:
 496 files changed, 53053 insertions(+), 34391 deletions(-)

And that between master and 5.2 tip:
 462 files changed, 39932 insertions(+), 26039 deletions(-)

Selectively backporting all that stuff is a major undertaking.
Wouldn't it be better to create a 5.4 branch from master and remove
the incomplete features again?

  Bastian