[Discuss-gnuradio] Merging of 'next' back in to 'master' and new 3.4.x stable series

[Johnathan Corgan]

As Tom Rondeau had announced earlier on the list and as we've
discussed on the last two developer conference calls, we are planning
a transition in the GNU Radio repository that will result in the
current 'next' branch merging back into the 'master' branch, and a
release 3.4.0 after a period of stabilization.

How this affects you and what actions you might need to take depend on
how you have been obtaining and installing GNU Radio and whether or
not you wish to use the new features in the 3.4.x release series.
Read on for how we will accomplish the transition and how to prepare
your GNU Radio installation for it.  This announcement doesn't go into
the differences in features between 3.3 and 3.4, but instead focuses
on the mechanics of the transition itself.

- We will post a release 3.3.1 tarball to ftp.gnu.org.  This is a
snapshot of the current git master branch (already tagged as v3.3.1,
commit is 592153b2).  If you have currently installed 3.3.0 from a
source tarball, you'll be able to download 3.3.1 and install from that
without any impact to your application development.  It is, as usual,
recommended you do a 'make uninstall' from your current source tree
first, to ensure all traces of 3.3.0 are gone prior to installing
3.3.1.  Release 3.3.1 is the last planned release of the 3.3.x stable
series.

- Work is underway by the Debian packager for GNU Radio, Bdale Garbee,
to get the 3.3.1 release into Debian (and hence also it's
derivatives).  If you have installed GNU Radio 3.2.2 binaries from the
Debian or Ubuntu package manager, you'll eventually see an update
available to install GNU Radio 3.3.1.

- We will tag the current master branch as 'master-3.3', for
posterity.  If you currently have installed GNU Radio via 'git clone',
are using the current master branch, and you wish to continue using
the 3.3 API for your application development, you will need to update
your git repository by checking out the new branch 'master-3.3'.  It
is unlikely there will any future updates to this branch.

- We will merge the current 'next' branch back into 'master'.  Those
of you who have installed GNU Radio via 'git clone', are using the
master branch for your development, and do not switch to using
master-3.3, will see a large update in your source tree the next time
you update. It is *essential* that you uninstall GNU Radio using 'make
uninstall' before this happens, as the new code has many changed file
names and directories.  Furthermore, you will then need to 'make
distclean' or 'git clean -dxf' to restore your repository to a known
state before doing the update.  Finally, you can then update your
repository, get on the new master, then reinstall GNU Radio as usual.
Those of you who have already been working with the 'next' branch will
only need to update, switch to the 'master' branch, and then continue
working without interruption.

- At this point, we'll have a new 3.4.x master, and no 'next' branch.
Our development focus will be to stabilize this code, test with a
wider audience, then release a 3.4.0 tarball (and binary packages if
possible.)

As has been the practice in the GNU Radio project for a number of
years, our intent is that we will only add new code to the stable
branch that doesn't break user's application code, while implementing
any "API changing" code on a new 'next' branch.  So it is expected
that after we transition to the new master, most new development will
occur there, and we'll start issuing 3.4.1, 3.4.2, etc.  When we start
working on 3.5 API features, we'll branch a new next.

There are a few issues and bug fixes remaining on the current next
branch we need to resolve before any of this happens.  There are some
GNU Radio build issues with the Windows environment and the embedded
Linux distribution used with the E100 hardware from Ettus Research.
The Ettus Research UHD API will be undergoing a similar stable branch
freeze, so our intent is to coordinate efforts to ensure that
everything works together appropriately.

It has been a longer than usual development cycle with much work from
the GNU Radio development community to get to 3.4, and along with the
recent new hardware from Ettus Research, we're poised for some
exciting new SDR application development. Tom and I are working on a
3.3 -> 3.4 new feature announcement, and will address those topics
there.

Thanks,

Johnathan Corgan
Corgan Enterprises LLC