[Discuss-gnuradio] Request for Help: next branch

[Martin Braun]

Hi all,

you all saw Marcus' announcement on the state of 'next' branch (if you
haven't, go take a look at his email with the subject ("`next` branch:
Now incorporating Python3").

We are still somewhat away from a 3.8 release. As Marcus says, first, we
need to get the 'next' branch functional before we can merge it back
into master. This is probably our biggest hurdle before we can release
3.8, although there's a bunch of other issues we need to take care of.

To keep quoting Marcus, next branch is exciting right now, but it needs
some fixing, and that's where we're asking for help from the community.
Most likely, the biggest issue is this one:
https://github.com/gnuradio/gnuradio/issues/1842

It includes a bunch of sub-issues, and if you think you can help us on
those, please shout out, either here or in IRC or Slack!

We could use some help figuring out SWIG issues (does anyone know how to
do typemaps for Py3k?), and a bunch of other things are also failing. A
good place to start is to run the unit tests, and see which ones fail,
and if you have any ideas how to fix them, please contact us.

Ideally, you could make the 'next' branch your default branch for
non-critical work, and help us flush out the bugs we haven't found yet
(and again, ideally, provide fixes or at least suggestions).

I'm looking forward -- a lot -- to when we can merge next into master,
and be done with the next branch forever. This will be a great time for
the project, because we'll be able to iterate on smaller changes much
faster, and keep the outstanding PR queue short.

So, if you're an enthusiast, give it a shot! If you use GNU Radio
commercially, consider asking your employer for some hours of your work
to invest into stabilizing the next branch! If you're an academic, maybe
you can encourage students to check it out! Every man-minute can help.

Thanks all,

Martin