Re: [Opengrads-devel] v2

[Arlindo da S. <da...@al...>]

On Dec 18, 2007 8:15 AM, Jennifer Adams <jm...@co...> wrote:
>
> ... Jennifer has promised ...
> I did no such thing. I am very careful to never promise anything related to
> the timing of GrADS work.
>

I apologize for the poor choice of words. I should have said that in
our last conversation you mentioned that it wouldn't be until early
December that you would have a chance to review the current grads
sources under the opengrads repo. Wishfull thinking on my part lead me
to state it in stronger terms.

> Any chance that you would be looking
> at the v1.9 sources in the coming weeks?I have put the patches in gadef()
> and gaprow() into v2, and I will also look at the --enable-dynamic-supplibs
> stuff and the hooks for the new user-defined shared objects. (Add those to
> the list above.) A new release of v1.9 is a much lower priority than all the
> work for v2. I don't really see why it matters all that much...

We have to agree to disagree on this one:

1) I understand and support COLA's commitment to have a v2 release in
a timely fashion, and I acknowledge your contractual commitment with
whoever is funding the effort. It is amazing how much you guys have
accomplished on a shoe string budget.

2) I believe the community could use a fresh build of the v1.9 series
with a usable gradsdods on a larger number of platforms, some bug
fixes, and win32 builds. This would also help iron out any issues with
the new supplibs and get them addressed before v2 is released.

3) From the point of view of the opengrads effort, I'd like to have
the python and perl interfaces exposed to a larger user base, and
hopefully recruit folks interested in further develop these interfaces
and connect to other perl/python efforts (e.g., image generation and
volumetric visualization.)

4) The shared library extensions, especially the stuff from B.-J.
Tsuang can be very useful to a number of people. Although some
extensions developed for v1.9 will require a major port for v2, some
may require only simple updates. Again, until we release this to a
broader user base we won't know of any glitches that the few of us
using this are yet to run into. Dealing with these issues in the
context of the stable v1.9 codebase would be simpler and will pave the
way for v2.

As you know, I do see a point for new v1.9 binaries before v2 is out.
With help from Pat, Gary and Mike we took the COLA v1.9Dev sources
applied a number of bug fixes and have refrained from new features
except for the absolutely necessary for the opengrads extensions. We
are at a point  where could benefit from feedback on our work from the
grads community at large.

Brian/Jennifer: here is the hard question: if you think it would be
sometime until you can have a chance to review our mods to v1.9Dev and
bless a final v1.9 release, can we go ahead and release what we have
as an un-official release candidate on gradsusr? With the usual
disclaimer that it is not the "final" release which will come directly
from COLA, and that COLA is not to be blamed for any issues with the
builds.  As I said many times I do not want to see what we are doing
as a fork but rather as a device to infuse community contributions in
the overall grads development.

  Cheers!

      Arlindo

-- 
Arlindo da Silva
da...@al...