Hi All, We've been discussing the next stable release, OpenSceneGraph-3.0, on and off for a year now, and it's been coming soon for rather too long. I believe it's time now to make a push to get 3.0 out the door, and if we get the testing done, code refined and not attempt any ambitious new feature development we should be able to get it out in the next three weeks - in time for a well deserved rest at the end of year ;-)
Getting 3.0 before Christmas is a very competitive goal. To achieve this I will need to be pretty strict about what new codes and fixes go in and what features we attempt to finish. OpenGL ES support is well established, iOS support is well on it's way to being ready, and the new serializers work very well in most usage models. All of these should be possible to tidy up in time for 3.0 without undue risk to the competitive schedule. One feature I have long assigned as a MUST HAVE for 3.0 was shader composition, and I and others have done work in this direction, but as things stand no one implementation is flexible and complete enough to say that it achieves the goals I wanted for it. I have been busy with too much other work in the last three months to complete what I started with what is now integrated with svn/trunk, what is there is about half done. For limited usage models it can be used successfully, and for more traditional usage of the OSG it doesn't effect usage so while it's incomplete I don't believe it's presence in svn/trunk need hold back 3.0. I have to be realistic though, there isn't anyway I or anyone else can perfect such a cutting edge feature in the next few weeks, so rather than try to chase the goal of having full feature shader composition, I feel it we just need to let this feature take a back seat till after 3.0 and shift it to a goal for the follow up stable release 3.2. In prep for 3.0 I will start pushing out one or two more dev releases, and then go a feature freeze and the 3.0 branch, from this a series a release candidates will be made, till the final one goes out the door. A provisional schedule will be something like: Friday 3rd December OpenSceneGraph-2.9.10 dev release Friday 10th December OpenSceneGraph-2.9.11 dev release Tuesday 14th December OpenSceneGraph-3.0 branch made Wednesday 15th December OpenSceneGraph-3.0-rc1 Friday 15th December OpenSceneGraph-3.0-rc2 (if required) Monday 19th December OpenSceneGraph-3.0-rc3 (if required) Wednesday 22nd December OpenSceneGraph-3.0-rc4 (if required) Somewhere between 19th to 24th December official OpenSceneGraph-3.0 release Hopefully this competitive schedule won't sound too crazy. Lots of testing will be required from myself and others in the community - a busy time for us all even without adding extra release work. The more testing we can do of the OSG and how well it works against our applications the more we'll be able to fix problems and refine it for the final stable release. When working within this time frame we all need to think from the perspective of minimizing the risk on the schedule and prioritizing code robustness over feature development, so it's no time to start proposing wouldn't it be great to have feature x for 3.0. It's about getting 3.0 out the door, further new features will be for 3.2 and beyond. This is just a first post in a series for working towards getting 3.0 out the door. If you have thoughts/opinions/suggestions about getting 3.0 smoothly then please post them here. Thanks in advance for you help, Robert. _______________________________________________ osg-users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openscenegraph.org/listinfo.cgi/osg-users-openscenegraph.org
