While I agree with this overall, I don’t see why we need 2 GRASS branches. What 
is the value in 2 GRASS 6 branches that cannot be achieved with 1 branch?

Michael
______________________________
C. Michael Barton 
Director, Center for Social Dynamics & Complexity
Professor of Anthropology, School of Human Evolution & Social Change
Head, Graduate Faculty in Complex Adaptive Systems Science
Arizona State University
Tempe, AZ  85287-2402
USA

voice:  480-965-6262 (SHESC), 480-965-8130/727-9746 (CSDC)
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                http://www.public.asu.edu/~cmbarton

On Apr 7, 2014, at 12:07 PM, Markus Metz <[email protected]> wrote:

> On Mon, Apr 7, 2014 at 12:19 AM, Helena Mitasova <[email protected]> wrote:
>> I believe that we have a communication problem here rather than a 
>> disagreement about the GRASS6.5:
>> 
>> Hamish says:
>> "GRASS 6.x is already far along into bugfix maintenance mode.
>> *Please, just leave it to naturally and quietly make its way into history.*
>> I wish to use the bulk of my grass dev time maintaining the grass 6 line.
>> To do that properly I need a staging area, and devbr6 is it. "
>> 
>> which is pretty much in agreement with Martin's:
>> "I think we should really stop thinking about GRASS 6 "development",
>> So please bug fix only should go there (relbr64). No new functionality."
>> 
>> So I think that we have a broad agreement on maintenance only mode for 
>> grass6 line,
>> and if there is a concern that new features will be added to grass6.5, 
>> perhaps we can keep it
>> in read-only mode as suggested in one of the initial emails in this 
>> discussion and have
>> only Hamish keep write access for testing ("staging area").
> 
> Thinking about it, keeping devbr6 is fine with me, we just need to
> maintain some discipline to apply the same changes to both devbr6 and
> relbr6. Therefore, all developers should have write access to devbr6,
> otherwise Hamish has to port all bug fixes made to relbr6 back to
> devbr6. Since the code base of devbr6 and relbr6 is largely identical,
> the same fix can be applied to both branches which is not a lot of
> work. We might need to make another effort to synchronize the code
> base of devbr6 and relbr6 to further facilitate backporting of bug
> fixes.
> 
>> 
>> I think that if Hamish can maintain GRASS6 line this will free the time for 
>> all other developers to focus on GRASS7.
> 
> Sounds reasonable.
> 
> Markus M
> 
> 
>> Regarding GRASS7 - it is in a pretty good shape, we have been using it in 
>> classes since the fall semester
>> and I was quite surprised how little changes are needed to update the full 
>> semester course material for GRASS7.
>> 
>> Helena
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Helena Mitasova
>> Associate Professor
>> Department of Marine, Earth, and Atmospheric Sciences
>> 2800 Faucette Drive, Rm. 1125 Jordan Hall
>> North Carolina State University
>> Raleigh, NC 27695-8208
>> [email protected]
>> 
>> "All electronic mail messages in connection with State business which are 
>> sent to or received by this account are subject to the NC Public Records Law 
>> and may be disclosed to third parties."
>> 
>> On Apr 6, 2014, at 4:45 PM, Markus Metz wrote:
>> 
>>> On Sun, Apr 6, 2014 at 3:16 PM, Moritz Lennert
>>> <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>> On 06/04/14 13:46, Hamish wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>>> As mentioned before, I wish to use the bulk of my grass dev time
>>>>> maintaining the grass 6 line. To do that properly I need a staging
>>>>> area, and devbr6 is it.
>>> 
>>> I don't see the need for a devbr6 because maintaining the GRASS 6 line
>>> means backporting bug fixes from trunk. New functionality should be
>>> implemented in trunk, as in any other project. Bug fixes are then
>>> backported to the release branch, unfortunately we have now two
>>> release branches. Apart from addons, there will most probably not be
>>> any more GRASS 6 development, only GRASS 6 bug fixing, for which a
>>> GRASS 6 release branch is IMHO sufficient.
>>> 
>>> I don't think it makes sense to maintain two GRASS major versions if
>>> development aka adding new functionality should take place in both.
>>> Some contributors like to implement new functionality in devbr6, but
>>> most contributors follow the (IMHO logical) way of trunk -> relbr. The
>>> now proposed development way of trunk -> relbr_7 -> devbr6 -> relbr6
>>> or or also devbr6 -> relbr6, skipping trunk, is unrealistic, will slow
>>> down GRASS development, and might lead to diverging branches.
>>> 
>>> If GRASS 6, and release branch maintenance in general, is restricted
>>> to bug fixing, it should be easy to maintain trunk and two release
>>> branches. Granted that trunk is not abused as addon repository by
>>> adding untested code.
>>> 
>>> My 2c,
>>> 
>>> Markus M
>>> 
>>> 
>>>>> Hosting a clone on github for that is too
>>>>> ridiculous and broken a situation to begin to contemplate.
>>>>> 
>>>>> If devbr6 is removed I simply can not do the stable grass 6
>>>>> maintenance job properly. So without that there is really very little
>>>>> for me to contribute in future. It will not translate to me spending
>>>>> more time working on grass 7, only drive me away from the project.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> I think that seen Hamish' continued effort for this project this a serious
>>>> enough situation to demand a solution.
>>>> 
>>>> But maybe the idea to actually release a first version of grass7 in a not 
>>>> to
>>>> far future is a way out.
>>>> 
>>>> Hamish, maybe you could be the official grass6 maintainer, managing the
>>>> whole grass6 development in the way you propose, i.e. any new development
>>>> and bugfixes first go into grass6dev for a period of testing, before _you_
>>>> make the decision that something can be backported to grass6release. I do
>>>> think however, that for this to work, we would need to regularly publish
>>>> snapshots of grass6dev for easy testing.
>>>> 
>>>> All other devs only commit to grass6dev, never to grass6release.
>>>> 
>>>> Just my 2¢,
>>>> 
>>>> Moritz
>>>> 
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