Hey all,
First, an official Happy New Year to you all! I'm breaking down this email into a few sections below.
Releases: A newer release of Inkscape will be going into the next distro release cycle. Whether this is 0.46.1 or 0.47 is what needs to be determined. I know that with at least a handful of us, there is a great desire to make it 0.47. However, this may not be feasible (or preferable) for any number of reasons. A vote is definitely in order for this. We should have some sort of brief discussion about what are the most compelling reasons to either make it 0.47 or not 0.47. (I am aware that 0.46.1 has been discussed before, I've unfortunately had health issues preventing me from actively working on it, but with my current doctor downtime, should be doable)
Build Systems: Discussion of the possibility of switching build systems to cmake or btool has resurfaced again recently. It seems like the obvious goals should be that we use one build system on all platforms and it be something that is maintainable by multiple individuals. From my understanding all three build systems in the mix are crossplatform. Is there an updated comparison list of the benefits and drawbacks of each? Personal experiences? Given that I almost exclusively build on linux these days, it doesn't impact me greatly and I don't really have a preference.
Version Control: In the past we also discussed potentially switching to a dvcs such as git or bzr. I'm pretty sure we all know the benefits of using a dvcs, and it seems (I may be wrong) that a modern dvcs is a little friendlier with tags and branches (which would be nice to use more in the future). We have a handful of people who I know are working with bzr on a regular basis, would anyone like to chime in on if it seems like a good "successor" to svn for our project and if it would be a worthwhile switch? Bryce, Ted, Mental, Kees? Anyone think git would be a better choice?
Future Releases: After this extremely long development cycle, and the amount of future refactoring we're still looking to do, I think we need a new stable/devel branching strategy for the future. Or at the very least, a bleeding edge branch for GSoCers and the like in addition to main devel. Also, it would be great to have regular releases that tie into the distro release cycles (with minimal benefit of easy PR). Anyone else care to chime in?
That's all for now... I think the next release should be the top priority to vote on and discuss now, because if people want it to be 0.47, we need to get crackin'.
Cheers, Josh