Graham Percival<address@hidden> writes:
STABLE RELEASE
Almost everybody wants stable releases more frequently. They
attract positive attention, they get updated docs and bugfixes and
new features into the hands of users, etc. We had the first two
release candidates back in Sep. Unfortunately, we've had Critical
issues since then.
http://code.google.com/p/lilypond/issues/list?can=2&mode=grid
There's one spacing regression (found 42 hours ago) which can
probably be fixed easily. But there's also 3 problems in GUB that
have seen no action for a month or more.
I know that some people tried to work on GUB but found that they
couldn't build it on ubuntu 11.10. It's just possible that the
regression in gcc 4.6 was to blame...
For 32bit x86 pretty likely. With the current sources, it should no
longer cause problems.
So there is _definitely_ room for people to get moving again on GUB.
Here are presumably the three critical issues Graham is talking about:
1948 Windows install clobbered system PATH
<URL:http://code.google.com/p/lilypond/issues/detail?id=1948>
1943 lilypond after 2.15.8 fails on x86 Macs Regression
<URL:http://code.google.com/p/lilypond/issues/detail?id=1943>
1933 Lilypond-book requires msvcrt again Regression
<URL:http://code.google.com/p/lilypond/issues/detail?id=1933>
All of these are on non-GNU platforms. Now for users of those
platforms, participating with development work is often not the most
attractive task they can think of, and I can't exactly blame them. But
if we are not supposed to cut off the non-GNU user base, we need them to
take an interest.
but without any action on GUB, we don't really know. Given the lack
of interest[1] in stable releases, I guess that 2.16 might occur some
time in summer 2012?
[1] recall that I define "interest" as "people submitting or
discussing patches".
I'm planning a big recruitment drive for new contributors in Jan
2012. It would be *really* helpful if we got as many "force
multipliers" (i.e. "maintainability" issues in the tracker)
resolved before then.
I am currently back into work on the parser. I would like to get the
music function argument parsing business into a shape where there is no
need to document strange rules or special cases or shortcomings. That
is a maintainability issue for me and the current skill set distribution
does not make it sensible to have anybody else work on that.
I think we need to recruit people willing to work on the GUB (Grand
Unified Builder, cf.<URL:http://lilypond.org/gub/> now. I am copying
the user list for that reason.