[Hamlib-developer] 4.6.3 and 4.7.0 releases plan

[Nate B. <n0...@n0...>]

Hi all.

Over the past several days I've been looking over the issue tracker on
GitHub and doing a little bit of triage that Mike was unable to get to.

I know Mike had a vision of a future release timeline.  It's not set in
stone so I'm not suggesting that the project hold itself rigidly to it.
For example, he envisioned 5.0 by late 2026.  As I recall, bumping the
major version is only necessary if the C ABI changes to such an extent
that recompilation of client programs is necessary, so, for now, I don't
foresee 5.0 being imminent.

What I would like to do is ask that everyone take a look at the issue
tracker:

https://github.com/Hamlib/Hamlib/issues

and look for something that you can help with.  Some are getting to be
quite old with the oldest at almost five years.  Some require some
testing with certain hardware to see if an issue still exists.  It's
impossible for anyone to have all of the hardware Hamlib supports so the
project has always depended on help from those with hardware.  To that
end I would like to see the number of issues reduced by month's end, if
possible.

This leads to my plan for the next release.  I would like to roll up the
current master branch into a 4.6.3 release by the end of April.  As all
of the commits since 4.6.2 appear to be fixes and not new features,
please limit Pull Requests (PRs) to fixes including closing issues.
Upon release, 4.6.3 will be dedicated to the memory of Mike.

After the next release, master will be open to new features and be
planned as a 4.7.0 release.  I've been a bit lax in adding the '.0' to
the initial minor release in a series and I think that has resulted in
some confusion over the years.  Hopefully 4.7.0 can be released in a few
months. 

At one time I proposed to have a release cadence of late winter
and late summer to stay ahead of the Ubuntu release cycle.  I'm not sure
if this is still a reasonable release strategy as I'm unsure if Ubuntu
is still the amateur radio favorite it once was.  It's likely best that
we make releases when it is the best timing for this project, i.e. when
it's ready.

Thoughts?

73, Nate

-- 
"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all
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