Re: [Gretl-devel] functions vs commands (was Re: Octave support)
On Tue, 2 Mar 2010, Sven Schreiber wrote:
Riccardo (Jack) Lucchetti schrieb:
> I'd be more ambitious.
>
> We now have a number of ideas for backward-incompatible changes, the
> most far-reaching being the abolition of "end if" and "end loop".
If we
> have to break people's scripts, let's do it once and for all. My
> proposal: release 1.9.0 advertising it as a preparation release for
> 2.0.0. The visible changes would be, apart from what is now in CVS, the
> fact that we advertise in the loudest and most annoying way that the
> syntax is about to change, via warnings, error messages, pop-up windows,
> you name it.
I would also suggest to help users in the transition as much as
possible. This includes of course documenting the changes (but that is
being done nicely anyway), and a tool like Python's '2to3' which tries
to automate the transition from python 2.x to python 3.x as far as can
be done. I hope I'm not promising too much but I could volunteer to
write a Python script that would try to do that with the transition
gretl 1.x -> gretl 2.x. (Some parts would be easy, like replacing 'end
if' with 'endif' -- that's what you mean by "abolition",
right?-- but
other parts of course would be more difficult or even impossible.)
That would be real cool.
>
> In the meantime, development continues as normal. When we reach the
> following milestones:
>
> - System GMM estimator for dynamic panel data (Blundell-Bond)
> - At least EGARCH/GJR
> - Bivariate probit / IV probit
>
> which are IMO the main holes in our coverage, we release 2.0.0 with the
> new syntax as well.
I think there is no reason to combine "feature milestones" with the
release of 2.0.0. IMHO this just makes it more difficult to communicate
to the users the backwards-incompatible changes. New features are being
added to gretl all the time (thanks to you!) with just regular minor
releases. Why change that now? So maybe those estimators will be ready
to be included in the 1.9.x series, or in the 2.0.x series, I think it
doesn't matter. (Since they are not coded in gretl script, the syntax
changes shouldn't affect them, right?)
I disagree. Bizarre as it may seem, people do regard version numbers as
meaningful. IMO it makes good marketing sense to give a signal outside the
small clique of gretl enthusiasts basically saying "gretl has come of
age". There's a crowd out there who still think that gretl is a nice toy
for teaching undergraduates.
Changing major version number may help in shifting the perception about
gretl. But if we want people to believe that now gretl is in the same
league as the big guys, the changelog has to be MASSIVE. If we manage to
convince people that gretl 2.x is substantially different from gretl 1.x,
it may be psychologically easier for them to accept the fact that old
scripts may have to be revised.
Riccardo (Jack) Lucchetti
Dipartimento di Economia
Università Politecnica delle Marche
r.lucchetti(a)univpm.it
http://www.econ.univpm.it/lucchetti