German online banking users asking for 2.5.x very soon

[Mike Evans]

On Mon, 05 Dec 2011 10:26:45 +0100
Christian Stimming <christian at cstimming.de> wrote:

> Dear all,
> 
> the German online banking (HBCI) users are facing a major version  
> upgrade in many online banking servers, which requires an update on  
> the client side as well (i.e. an updated libaqbanking). However, our  
> gnucash 2.4 branch and in particular its Windows build is locked on  
> some older aqbanking version due to its older gtk version setup. In  
> order to continue online banking support, those users need either a  
> 2.4.x windows build with newer gtk (>= 2.20), or we need to branch
> off a new stable series 2.5.x/2.6.x rather soon.
> 
> As 2.4.0 is now 12 months old, I'd rather prefer to have a new
> stable branch started very soon. There is some ongoing work on trunk,
> but this isn't a problem: New testing code is orthogonal to a new
> release, and new features which happen to be not yet stable can still
> be disabled in the stable branch.
> 
> It is not a solution to point those users to trunk versions,  
> especially due to the incomplete translations in trunk. Hence, if we  
> think we can call trunk "stable enough", we consequently should
> branch off a new stable branch from the current status.
> 
> And indeed I believe current trunk to be rather stable in terms of
> the code base. There haven't been any newly discovered serious errors
> in the main code for quite some time. We should make good use of
> this stability, branch off a new stable branch so that it can get  
> translated, and continue the main development on a new trunk rather  
> soon.
> 
> Potential timeline:
>   - 2.5.0 unstable release within the next 1-2 weeks (e.g. Sunday  
> 11th) with a call for translation
>   - Additional 2.5.x unstable releases every two weeks
>   - Branch off a 2.6 branch at release 2.5.2 or 2.5.3 so that trunk
> is allowed to be unstable again
>   - Add another 2.5.x unstable releases
>   - Have 2.6.0 in February or March
> 
> Major new user-visible features:
> - Windows: Using new gtk version
> - Updated online banking for German banks (HBCI)
> - Very large number of bugfixes
> - Customer / Vendor overview pages
> - Customer overview reports
> - ... please insert your favorite new feature here
 - Line charts for Net Worth 
> 
> What do you think?
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Christian
> 
All seems reasonable to me.  I've been testing/using trunk with business
functions regularly with no problems.

Mike E