[openbabel-scripting] Post-2.0 Thoughts

[Geoffrey H. <ge...@ge...>]

It's been a few weeks since we released Open Babel 2.0. I usually  
think it's a good idea to take a look back after a release and decide  
what went well, what didn't, etc.

I've received some feedback already, but I hope we'll see more on the  
list.

* Timing: Several people thought the "freeze" wasn't announced far  
enough in advance, and there were some last-minute bug reports. Fair  
enough. So for future releases, we should have a slightly longer lead- 
time and a clearer release plan.

* Betas / Snapshots: To be honest, while we did get some feedback  
from the snapshots, we got a *lot* more from an actual "release."  
Were these snapshots helpful? How about the timing? Was one snapshot  
a month good, bad, about right?

* Scripting: The scripting wrappers had a nasty bug on Linux (that's  
now fixed). Did anyone try out the scripting wrappers in the  
snapshots? What could we have done to get more testing? Are the  
resulting Perl and Python modules useful? Should they have other  
functionality?

* Test Suite: I'll admit that I don't test enough on Linux boxes --  
Chris Morley was using Windows and I was using Mac OS X, assuming  
(stupidly) that Linux would be close enough. Are there willing  
testers on Linux who could provide feedback for snapshots in the future?

Any other complaints, critiques, etc. would be quite welcome.

Cheers,
-Geoff