[Yt-dev] 1.5 update, missed goal, feature free in trunk

[Matthew Turk]

Hi everyone,

This email has two major components.  If you don't care about YT-1.5,
skip to the bottom.

A couple weeks or months ago I emailed out suggesting a May 15
deadling; at the time, I thought this was feasible.  However, in the
intervening time, other concerns have sprung to the forefront,
displacing efforts to rewrite and shore up the documentation.  The
following tickets are still outstanding:

http://yt.enzotools.org/report/12

I will summarize these here.

#128: (Example Images) For documentation; I'm working on a sphinx
extension that will do this, using hg repos of the sample data.
Building the docs to include these will not be an easy task, but since
we will ship pre-built docs, it's not a problem.

#95: (Command-line script for radprofs) Britton's on this one, but I
think actually right now the ball is in my court.  So we're going to
sync up in a week and change or so to finish it up.

#214: (IPython demo scripts) This one might get canceled.  I wrote up
a little sphinx extension to run IPython.demo scripts and turn them
into documentation, which could then be stepped through interactively
(via IPython) and displayed inline in the docs.  It was complicated.
Interactive demos are super useful, and super cool, but I think this
is over-engineered.

#148: (set_zlim and set_cmap issue) This one I'm still confused on,
and not sure how to fix.  I can replicate it.  I'll look into it.

#132: (cross-reference) part of doc rewrite
#144: (sphinx-extensions) might get canceled or rolled into #128
#152: (doc changes) specific suggestions that are being taken into
account in the rewrite
#154: (splash screen update for reason) I need to get on this, using
the new logo
#181: (docs about running in parallel) Britton and I are on this, and
Stephen wrote some docs about HOP.

So that's where we're at.  Almost all documentation stuff.  A new
outline has been prepared, and there's a doc repo on hg.e.o.

Anyway, I've decided we should aim for a June 15 release date.  My
thesis is being turned in on May 29.  After that I'm goign to be
meeting up with a couple of you and we can spend a bit of time talking
about documentation and working.  It's clear from recent discussions
on the mailing list and offline that the docs need to be rethought.  I
take responsibility for this problem.  We're going to work hard and
fix it.

Okay.

That being said, and this is the important part, I am now officially
*freezing* the yt trunk to *new features*.  We will not have a new
branch for new features, but instead new features can go into
mercurial repositories and then after the release on June 15 we'll
port them all back when we move trunk->tags/yt-1.5.  (After porting
anything new, we'll discuss a reorganization.)

The mercurial repositories are open and available to everyone, so I
believe this is a good compromise that doesn't prevent bleeding-edgers
from grabbing stuff.  This is not a new mode of development or a shift
in character of our current development, but rather a temporary fix to
make sure we do not increase our work before pushing out a stable
release.

Bug fixes can still go in.  New features, not yet.  hg clone a repo
from hg.e.o (either yt-bitbucket or yt-trunk) and I'll give you a
place to push it to on hg.e.o along with a username.

Okay, thanks all.  Thanks guys, and let me know if you have any
problems with this, or if you can help with the documentation.  The
new proposed outline is on google docs, so if you'd like to
contribute, let me know and I'll shoot you an invite.

-Matt