2.6 Release

[Christian Stimming]

Am Mittwoch, 28. Dezember 2011, 18:16:48 schrieb John Ralls:
> A release plan isn't a "list of features" to "get enough reasons" for a
> 2.6.0 release. It's a list of features and existing bugs, whether
> implemented or not, that the project team agrees should be what's going to
> be in the 2.6.0 release. It guides the testers who use the development
> (2.5.x) releases, so that they know what to try out, and to write bugs
> against.

Ok, let my re-phrase my original proposal, like so:

Over the past months, several very useful features for small business usage 
have been added to trunk. I'd like to get those features out in the stable 
releases so that users who are asking for this can get them through their 
default distro package, which implies those features need to appear in a 
stable release series.

Here's an (incomplete) list of new features for small business users which is 
now available in trunk but not in 2.4:

 * Customer / Vendor overview pages
 * Print to PDF for reports and invoices by a single button click
 * Allow "Filter By" settings to be saved and re-used
 * Customer overview reports
 * Line chart report for Net Worth (Bug #664862)
 * Re-assign existing transactions as payments
 * Duplicate invoices
 * Easier invoice / bill handling: Post, Print, or Duplicate multiple items 
directly from the search result list
 * Better invoice printing setup: Choose the default invoice report for 
printing in the preferences 
 * Change the ordering of invoice entries by up/down buttons in the invoice 
window

* and last but not least Geert has ongoing work to include Credit Notes

I propose to start a new 2.5.0 / 2.6.0 release series in order to make those 
"small business user" improvements available in a stable release. As already 
discussed in length, there haven't been that much significant changes in 
gnucash apart from these features which might seem minor to all users who 
don't happen to use gnucash for running a business. On the upside, this means 
trunk in itself isn't that much unstable right now, which means we will 
probably get a 2.6.0 stable release ready with only very few unstable 2.5.x 
releases on the way. Because of this, the extra work to get trunk into shape 
for another stable branch is probably only a small distraction from longer-
term work that will continue on trunk.

> I doubt that either Gtk3 or the engine cleanup will be done in another year
> unless a lot of help shows up. Going through a development release series 
> while continuing that work in trunk will push both further out: Time spent
> getting a release polished up is time not spent on longer-term projects.
> 
> By the way, the time between 2.2.0 and 2.4.0 was 42 months (July 2007 to
> December 2010); it was 22 months between releasing 2.2.0 and the first 2.3
> release (May 2009). What's special about a year?

Point taken. My proposal is not based on particular time frames, but rather on 
making this collection of small business improvements available in a stable 
release, and do so in the near future (i.e. within the next 2-4 months).

Other proposals / comments?

Best Regards,

Christian