a request for the next 1.8.* version

[Derek Atkins]

Thomas Bushnell BSG <tb at becket.net> writes:

> What kind of time frame are you actually talking about?

Later this year, we hope.  We're really really trying to complete the
g2 port.  Some of the devs have become more active, and we have a few
new people who have started helping.

> This link is not comforting, for it reports that the gnome2 port is
> "nowhere near being usable accounting software".  This is what I
> already report to Debian users who ask about it too.  I say that
> upstream is working on the gnome2 version, which is unfortunately
> nowhere near ready.

That is certainly true today.  Ask again April 1 and we'll see.

> We just had two releases of 1.8 in a row to fix bugs; gnucash *cannot*
> build on mips due purely to the way-way-way out-of-date build tools,
> and using even newer versions of the old versions of the build tools
> invariably breaks the build system and causes pain.

It doesn't build on 6502, either.  Your point?  I'm sure there are
lots of platforms gnucash doesn't work on.  gnucash 1.8 is old code.
We're still maintaining it some, but that's not the focus of
development.

> Someone has to do the work; does the gnome-2 branch use new auto*
> tools?  That is, *not* autoconf-1.4? and *not* libtool-1.4?

Yes, it uses new autotools.  It has not (yet) been upgraded to a newer
libtool, but we plan to do that.

> If a Debian developer were to revamp the build system for 1.8 so that
> it works on modern systems, would there be any chance of having it
> folded into a release of the 1.8 branch?

1.8?  Unlikely.  As you said, using newer versions of the build tools
invariably breaks the build system and causes pain.  1.8 is supposed
to be _STABLE_ -- breaking the build is inherently unstable.  We had a
pair of releases in a row because we had a real data corruption
problem.  Data corruption != build problem on some random
way-out-there platforms.

If you have Debian Developers who want to help complete the g2 port,
we'll gladly fold patches into the g2 tree.

> Thomas

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available