[cairo] cairo 1.0 and future plans

[Carl Worth]

On Fri, 2 Sep 2005 17:15:31 -0400 (EDT), Behdad Esfahbod wrote:
> Thanks Carl for the notes.

You're quite welcome.

> I find this line very confusing:
> 
> -- Minor. Even/Odd = Release/Snapshot (tar files) or Branch/Head (CVS)
> 
> and suggest to change it to:
> 
> -- Minor. Even/Odd = tar files or CVS

I'll grant that the line is confusing, (I think I tried packing too
much information into one short line), but the minor version does not
distinguish tar files vs CVS. Here's another attempt at an
explanation:

The even/odd distinction of the micro component does distinguish tar
files vs. CVS:

	micro even = fixed state (tar file)
	micro odd  = fluid, in-progress development (CVS)

The even/odd distinction of the minor component is used for two
different things. The first is primarily useful for users of cairo tar
files:

	For tar files
	-------------
	minor even = release
	minor odd  = snapshot

The second is primarily useful for developers of cairo itself:

	For files from CVS
	------------------
	minor even = minor bug fixes only (maintenance branch)
	minor odd  = major changes acceptable (head)

Does that make more sense? If so, now we just need to find a way to
compact that text without losing too much information.

> > Anyone should please feel free to make other recommendations for what
> > should go on that ROADMAP. The long-term release-scheduling question
> > is still wide-open in my mind, and I think we need input from authors
> > of cairo-dependent libraries and applications to answer that.
> 
> I think something like 3-month cycles works good enough.  That
> reduces the number of stable bug-fix releases, while still wide
> enough to allow major changes.

I'm not sure that 3 months will be sufficient. If I recall correctly,
the GTK+ team has found that the GNOME 6 month cycle is too fast for
some of the major features that GTK+ wants to work on. Though it is
true that GTK+ has a code base more than 10X the current size of
cairo.

I think what I'd like to start with:

	1) What kind of schedule would users of cairo like to see,
	   (e.g. GTK+, mozilla, others...)

	2) What needs do those users know they have already.

And with that hopefully we could construct some satisfactory schedule
that's also somewhat realistic for achieving the features we want.

> > 	http://cairographics.org/src/cairo.c
> >
> > It is kind of fun to have this sort of CVS-based wiki though.
> 
> Yes, very interesting indeed.  Now make a way to accept ?1.0 to
> show the BRANCH_1_0 branch ;).

Heh. There is already:

	http://cvs.cairographics.org/

which does support a "?only_with_tag=BRANCH_1_0" syntax. My little
rewrite hack doesn't pass that one through as would be needed. But
like I said, this isn't really intended as yet another way to get at
the source code from the web. :-)

-Carl
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