Re: thoughts about 1.6 release

[Rob Browning]

Ariel Rios <address@hidden> writes:

> I have some thoughts about the new release:
> 
> -Do big noise when it gets out! I.e. have PR announcemnets,
> put notices on freshmeat, gnome news sites and other 
> important news sites. We  have some big changes in guile
> and we have to tell the world that:
> 1)we are alive
> 2)we have powerful new features (GOOPS, SRFIs, etc)
> 3)documentation
> 4)<put the rest of the new / improved features here>
> 5)we have a logo
> 6)we will conquer the world

All good ideas.  We can grab much of the info for a summary from NEWS.

> -Have guile 1.6 supported versions of apps that use guile
>  (gnome-guile, gnucash, guppi, gnumeric, scwm, etc)
>  We need to avoid the "i updated guile and everyhtings is screwed"
>  situation. From my part I can say that gnome-guile, gnumeric and
>  galway are working with 1.6 but I also know that scwm and guppi are not

While it would be nice to have everything working at the time of the
release, I suspect that might not be easy.  I think we should probably
notify the relevant authors and let them handle it on their own
schedule, helping explain things if/when they need it.

I'd rather not delay the release too long for this.

However, I would *really* like to either get an RPM spec file into
CVS, or at least talk to the people responsible for the RPMs and see
if I can't convince them to package guile similarly to the way Debian
does it.  The main thing I'd really like is them to version the shared
lib packages so multiple versions of guile/libguile can be installed
simultaneously.  Otherwise it's nearly impossible for RH users to
upgrade guile.  That's why gnucash still has to support guile 1.3.X.
RH users can't install a newer guile without breaking all the other
packages that depend on it.

Does the RH maintainer hang out here by any chance, or does anyone
know him/her?

> -Have a guile 1.5 release so we can check that everythins is right

That's the first step.  As soon as people decide they're ready (or by
the 21st, whichever comes first), I'm going to branch CVS.  The main
branch will be bumped to version 1.7.0, and the side-branch which will
be the stable release branch, will stay in the 1.5.X range.  Then I'll
start following the steps in RELEASE, including asking people for
testing on various arches...

-- 
Rob Browning <address@hidden> PGP=E80E0D04F521A094 532B97F5D64E3930