As Ray kindly announced to the list, we should think about making our
first real release of Maxima, 5.9.0, soon. I think mid-August to
mid-September is the correct time frame.
Even though we've strayed a little from my original proposal, I think
the basic ideas are still sound. Our goal should be a very solid 6.0.0
release. 5.9.0 should be viewed as the first solid step toward that
goal. We will definitely have unresolved bugs in the 5.9.x releases. We
can attract more users and developers with official releases than just
relying on CVS as we have so far. We probably should have released 5.9.0
already. It is my fault that we have not -- I was temporarily dazed by
the rate at which people were fixing bugs into thinking we could soon
take care of all the bugs in the bug tracking system. Fixing all the
open bugs before 5.9.0 was not part of the original plan.
Here is my current proposal:
1) Decide which bugs should be marked with the new "Fix for 5.9.0"
label. (I just added the label to the bug tracking system.)
2) Fix the labeled bugs.
3) Release 5.9.0. The release notes will include the fact that this is a
development release with known bugs. However, I think 5.9.0 should be at
least as solid as previous Maxima releases.
4) The only work to do between 5.9.0 and 5.9.1 is converting the code to
uniform case conventions.
5) Release 5.9.1.
6) Carry on with the original plans, as recently reposted by Ray.
--Jim