Re: grep project state

[Julian Foad]

Claudio Fontana wrote:
> it has been a while since I've made some minor contributions
> to grep, and I was wondering what the state of the grep project is.
> I am currently helping Karl with some project maintainment
> tasks, and I was worried about grep not having a release
> in quite some time, even though one would be very much 
> needed.

Hello Claudio.  Sorry for the delay in replying.  I hope you don't mind me 
making this public.

In my view, the state of the Grep project is that there are a lot of good fixes 
in CVS and we should release a version as soon as possible, partly because a 
lot of people would be glad to have those fixes, but more importantly because 
making a release would encourage more people to get involved and fix the 
remaining bugs.

There are some important bugs that have not been fixed in CVS, such as the very 
slow handling of UTF-8 data, and also several little bugs and several proposed 
enhancements, but I really think it is best to try to release the fixes that we 
have before working on more changes of any sort.

I think we (anybody who is listening) need to do whatever we can to help get 
the current code tested and released.  We need the Maintainer's help with some 
steps, but we can do a lot on our own, like:

 * prepare a Change List (distilled from the ChangeLog and bug tracker)

 * decide whether to call it 2.5.3 or 2.6.0

 * make a Release Candidate package

 * submit the RC package to a translation team such as
     http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/translation/registry.cgi?domain=grep
     (We should first merge in the work that they have already done.)

 * review the changes (analyse them, check that they are documented, etc.)

 * test the changes

 * find out what else needs to be done to release an official GNU package

 * spread the word to find more people who can help

For example, once we have a Release Candidate, we should announce it on some 
very public place (such as SlashDot) to get help with testing it and then lots 
of people will be interested in getting it released officially.

I think we should do these things first, and then ask Stepan to help with the 
few things that only a Maintainer can do.  I think he will be happy to help us 
if we do most of the work first.

I wish I could make some time to help with this.  I mean to do so, and each 
time somebody like you writes to ask it makes me more interested in helping. 
(When nobody asks about it, I tend to forget about it.)

Vivat Grep!

- Julian