task tracker enabled (was: Re: Schedule for 3.4.1)

[John W. Eaton]

On 12-May-2011, Rik wrote:

| I think we could do a point release at any time.  The new stable/default
| methodology should make this easier.  However, isn't binary compatibility
| broken between 3.4.0 and 3.4.1?  If memory serves, jwe discovered something
| in the way configure.ac was set up that was embedding library versions.  It
| is now fixed so that 3.4.1 will be compatible with 3.4.2, but we should
| make a prominent note about it.  Also, PCRE was not required for the 3.4.0
| branch, but *is* a requirement for 3.4.1 because of the way merges were
| done and the abandonment of the 3-4-x branch.  Again, a prominent note
| would help about the new requirements.
| 
| The only issue report I would like to see resolved is one with
| configuration and where to place library files
| (https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?32840).  Currently we are putting certain
| libraries in libexcdir rather than libdir which is contrary to the GNU
| coding standard
| 
(http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/manual/autoconf.html#Installation-Directory-Variables).
|  I know jwe had some concerns about parts of the patch supplied in the bug
| report, so I would urge just doing the minimal change and putting the
| libraries in libdir and not doing the rest of the naming changes.

Yes, we need to fix the library versioning problem and note the
incompatibilities before the release.  Fixing the installation
directory problem also seems like a good idea, but I'll have to look
at the bug report again.

To make sure that we remember these items, I enabled the task tracker
on savannah and added the three items above to it.  I also created an
address@hidden mailing list to use for notifications,
same as we have for the bug and patch trackers.

My intent is to use the task tracker as the place to note what things
should be done before the next release, but I also allowed for a "wish
list" category.

If you have other tasks that should be completed before the next
release, please add them as new and separate items.

The mailing list and task tracker are currently only accessible to
Octave group members on savannah.  My reasoning for limiting access is
that we don't need to give the impression that random people are
allowed to tell us what our priorities are, or what tasks we should
work on.  They seem perfectly capable of using the bug tracker and the
mailing lists to do that.

jwe