Re: GSL 2.0 roadmap

[Brian Gough <bjg@gnu.org>]

At Thu, 27 Aug 2009 14:42:12 +0300,
Tuomo Keskitalo wrote:
> thanks for the list. I was wondering that since there will be a new
> major version, this might be a good chance to modify some of the
> APIs / frameworks. Is this OK?  For example, when I was implementing
> msadams and msbdf for ode-initval, I had to make some modifications
> to the algorithms in order to fit them into GSL ode-initval
> framework. It is clear that the stepper, control and evolve objects
> would sometimes benefit from mutual communication. Should
> ode-initval framework be changed so that this kind of communication
> is possible in future?

Yes, we could do that wherever there is a clear benefit.

> How long would it be before 2.0 is out, approximately? More or less than 
> a year? It might be good idea to keep the 2.0 branch "unstable" for some 
> time, before APIs are frozen (if changes to frameworks are OK).

Hopefully less than a year. I still try to make a release every six
months (more or less).

> Does "source compatibility" mean that user interfaces / APIs should not 
> be changed?

I think I meant to write "keep source compatibility where possible"
(i.e. for rearranging structs) .  For some changes, we will need to
break that.

> > ** Convert to BZR? (check GPG signing and integrity guarantees)
> 
> Do you mean http://bazaar-vcs.org/Bzr ?
> Would this mean to abandon git?

Bzr is now the standard GNU version control system, so it would mean
abandoning git, yes.  The timing of switching to git was unfortunate,
as the announcement about Bzr was not long after, but there wasn't any
way to know that before.  However, switching again isn't a high
priority.

-- 
Brian Gough