[Plplot-devel] Freeze date and release date have been delayed

[Alan W. I. <ir...@be...>]

My plans to actuate the freeze for merging large changes to master,
testing for a month or so and releasing before Christmas went up in
smoke because I was dealing with a number of issues such as a sick
computer and an extremely interesting and distracting baseball season
(for Blue Jays fans like me who suddenly had an interesting team
to watch after 20 years of mediocrity). But my computer is fine again and the
baseball season is finished (unfortunately without Jays winning the
World series, "but maybe next year") so I am now working on PLplot again.
Therefore, it is time to discuss once again when we should make that
freeze and release.

@Phil, Jim, and Arjen:

This discussion is primarily addressed to you guys because you have
wxwidgets fixes and extensions (Phil), new Windows device and plbuf
and plmeta upgrades (Jim), and a new Fortran interface (Arjen) that
are all "works in process".  And I would like to encourage all of
you to finish off those efforts rather than having them drag on
much longer.

>From my recent comprehensive testing results on Debian Jessie, I feel
the tip of the PLplot git master branch is in fairly good shape (aside
from the wxwidgets issues I mentioned), but I don't feel it is urgent
to immediately release the current set of bug fixes that have been
developed so far in this release cycle, and ideally I would like to
see a lot more merged to master before we release it. So my
inclination is to delay the release substantially (say until some time
in the first quarter next year) to give one of you/all of you the
chance to greatly improve wxwidgets (Phil) or merge something new that
is significant (Jim and Arjen) to master.  That delay might also allow
me to land a major fill fix and a major upgrade to epa_build that I
have been contemplating.

Anyhow, your input on the ideal release date (and freeze date roughly
one month before that release date) from the perspective of your
current PLplot development plans would be most welcome.

Alan
__________________________
Alan W. Irwin

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state
implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); the Time
Ephemerides project (timeephem.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting
software package (plplot.sf.net); the libLASi project
(unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net);
and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net).
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Linux-powered Science
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