Re: Octave 5.2.0 release

[Kai Torben Ohlhus]

On 1/15/20 2:41 AM, chris_frick wrote:
> Dear all
> 
> I very appreciate your efforts to release 5.2.0 soon. Thanks a lot
> 
> I'm unfortunately not very familiar with Octave nor other open source
> developments, that's probably why I'm a bit confused:
> The bug reported under http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?45351 is marked to be
> closed but its fix doesn't seem to be part of the RC which you provided
> under
> https://octave.space/stable_56dd7419d7aa/octave-5.1.90-w64-installer.exe.
> 
> I built afair an intermediate version a few months ago on Linux and there
> the bug seemed to be fixed.
> 
> Is this possible? If yes, why? Would it be somehow possible to get it in the
> 5.2.0 release anyway?
> 
> Best regards and thanks a lot again
> Christian
> 


Dear Christian,

In the Octave development repository [1], there are two major branches
"stable" and "default".  "stable" was 5.1.0 and is currently 5.1.90,
whereas "default" will become 6.1.0.

The patches mentioned in bug #45351 [2] went into "default", even it was
long time ago, see [1].

If you build Octave from the repository, you build "default" by default.
 This is why you saw these changes included.

In general into "default" there go Octave patches that change the
current behavior or just might break things in the "stable" release.  I
cannot judge, why "default" was decided, but it is very unsafe to graft
those patches into the "stable" branch.  The effort of getting the
changes right might not be justified.

But no worries, Octave 6 will come this year soon [3].  Many
hard-working volunteers are on this project.  Please use your custom
build for a while and keep watching out for your changes to work with
Octave 6.

With best wishes,
Kai


[1] https://hg.savannah.gnu.org/hgweb/octave/graph/392b14b0c085
[2] https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?45351
[3] https://wiki.octave.org/6.1_Release_Checklist