[Gretl-devel] 2.0 release (was Re: functions vs commands)
On Wed, 3 Mar 2010, Sven Schreiber wrote:
That seems to leave two possibilities:
1) make 1.9 the syntax-"breaking" release, followed by a super-duper 2.0
feature release
2) roll everything into 2.0
Option (1) would have the advantage to get a chance to iron out the bugs
coming from the massive underlying changes in 1.9 to have a killer 2.0
version. It would also buy time to actually get the features ready for 2.0.
Option (2) would be better in the sense that it's easier to communicate
that syntax was changed in version 2.0.
Jack: Why do you think gretl needs a feature-laden 2.0 this year? Of
course it would be cool, but you sound as if it's a matter of life and
death. I'm not convinced, but as you saw before, that might change.
No, it isn't a matter of life and death. It's just that I think gretl
needs a milestone release and the goals that IMO have to be achieved to
mark a true milestone are within reach this year.
As for the two options you mentioned: we could follow an intermediate
strategy. That is, announce now that 1.9.0 will be the first in a series
of releases that will eventually lead to 2.0. All the releases in the
1.9.x series will have the new features in as soon as they're available,
so we can test them properly, but at the same time will be full of
annoying messages (the more annoying, the better) warning the user about
deprecated syntax.
When we feel ready, the warnings turn into errors, we stick the "2.0"
label on whatever gretl is at that point and we release.
Oh, and I forgot: another thing we need for 2.0 is IMO a guide to gretl
scripting: this can be based on some of the material in the User's Guide,
some from the Reference manual plus some new stuff. For example: the
User's Guide contains a whole chapter on the many variants of the loop
construct, but if you want to know what the syntax for an "if" block is,
you have to look it up in the help to the "if" command. The fact that
"!",
"&&" and "||" are the logical operators is mentioned only in
the help to
"genr". This is ok for us veterans, but anyone willing to learn from
scratch how to write a gretl script would have to spend some energy on
putting all the info together.
Riccardo (Jack) Lucchetti
Dipartimento di Economia
Università Politecnica delle Marche
r.lucchetti(a)univpm.it
http://www.econ.univpm.it/lucchetti