[Tauruslib-users] Taurus 3.x and 4.x release plan

[Carlos P. <cpa...@ce...>]

Hi all, 

As mentioned in a previous email [1], the next major version release of 
Taurus (v4.x) is now closer. Now I would like to introduce our proposal 
for the release plan (feedback is welcome).

Our plan is to treat the taurus4-preview branch [2] as a feature branch 
(similar to what we do for the tep-x branches) and eventually merge it 
into the develop branch (among other things, this implies the acceptance 
of TEP3 and TEP14).

Our intention is to be ready for merging into develop right after the 
Jan16 release (which will likely be Taurus 3.7).

After we merge, the development of new features would be based on the 
develop branch (i.e. on v 4.x), and official beta releases of Taurus 4 
could be done shortly after the Jan16 release.

Considering that existing user's code may need changes to run on Taurus 
4 (see the PS note below) and also that legacy systems may not be able 
to meet the updated dependencies of Taurus 4 (e.g., PyQt>=4.8), we 
intend to continue supporting the Taurus 3.x series during some time via 
hotfixes with selected bug fixes (and, exceptionally, with feature 
backports from the 4.x series). Nevertheless, we strongly recommend to 
port existing code to Taurus 4 as early as possible, and to base any new 
development on the latest version.

Please reply to this email with your comments, questions and/or 
suggestions regarding the proposed release plans.

Cheers,

Carlos 
(on behalf of the ALBA Taurus Developers)


PS: Taurus 4 is largely compatible with Taurus 3. Code that uses only 
standard widgets is likely to run unmodified. More complex code may also 
run unmodified thanks to a backwards compatibility API that transparently 
adapts 3.x API to its 4.x equivalent (and logs messages warning the user 
to help porting the code later on). Still, some 3.x API cannot be 
automatically adapted, and code that uses it may need to be changed.

Links:
[1] http://sf.net/p/tauruslib/taurus-devel/message/34641275/
[2] http://sf.net/p/tauruslib/taurus.git/ci/taurus4-preview/tree/

-- 
+----------------------------------------------------+
 Carlos Pascual Izarra
 Scientific Software Coordinator
 Computing Division
 ALBA Synchrotron  [http://www.albasynchrotron.es]
 Carrer de la Llum 2-26
 E-08290 Cerdanyola del Valles (Barcelona), Spain
 E-mail: cpa...@ce...
 Phone: +34 93 592 4428
+----------------------------------------------------+