Re: Release 4.4.0

[PhilipNienhuis]

John W. Eaton wrote
> On 12/27/2017 11:35 AM, Rik wrote:
> 
>> One of the items in the Release Checklist is to incorporate GSOC project 
>> code and patches which look good from the patch tracker.  It is best to 
>> do that early as that will de-stabilize things for a while and we want 
>> to get some testing on the new code before sending it out in to the
>> world.
> 
> I will try to make a 4.2.2 release ASAP.
> 
> I'm afraid that if we incorporate GSoC code and the spreadsheet 
> functions from the I/O package now, then we will not have a new release 
> for at least another 6 months, probably even longer.
> 
> Rather than falling into the trap of trying to include and fix 
> everything before the next release I would prefer to move in the 
> direction of more frequent releases with major new features only being 
> added near the beginning of a release cycle.  So I propose that we not 
> add any large new chunks of code at this time but focus on fixing what 
> we can for a 4.4.0 release by the end of February.

Fair enough.
So 4.6.0 would be only be -say- a little over year away rather than 1.5 or 2
years? Sounds good to me.

BTW the spreadsheet I/O has been maturing for many years. 
I am a bit indifferent about moving it to core. AFAIU the main reason would
be Matlab compatibility ("expectations of Matlab users moving to Octave").
If that would help to attract more Octave users I'm all in favor; but
otherwise having it in an add-on package (that is even free as in "free
beer") doesn't look like a big obstacle to me (but that's just me). Other
script languages (e.g., Python, R) have such I/O options in add-on packages
as well.

Philip




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