[gmx-developers] plans for GROMACS 2017 release cycle

[Mark Abraham]

Hi,

With the first target technically passed, it's time for an update. In
practice, most of the Stockholm developers have had a lot of non-code calls
on their time, so we will push all the dates back a few weeks. Thus

April 21 - proposals in gerrit in approximately final form
May 22 - ship release candidate
June 5 - ship second release candidate
Final release mid June pending what we learn during testing.

Note that all the Stockholm people already have strong demands on their
time, so if it isn't already well discussed and working well on gerrit, it
is probably too late for this year's release :-)

Mark

On Thu, Mar 9, 2017 at 3:42 PM Mark Abraham <mark.j.abraham at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hi,
>
> It's time to start preparing for this year's release. Consistent with
> previous practice, we will have a soft deadline for work proposed for
> inclusion to have appeared in Gerrit in approximately final form, then
> we'll make a release candidate from the first patch on a new release-2017
> branch. That branch will thereafter be open, in the usual way, for all
> manner of fixes, docs and tests, with patches expected to focus on
> stability, correctness and minimal disruption. Thereafter, from that
> branch, we might make a future release candidate, and at some point a final
> release.
>
> For target dates I propose:
> * April 1 - proposals available in gerrit in approximately final form
> * May 1 - ship release candidate
> * May 15 - ship second release candidate if that seems useful
> * June 1 - ship 2017 final if there are no known serious problems
>
> There's a fair bit of work currently in gerrit that is refactoring to suit
> long term needs. There's no strong reason to push to get such things in the
> release, but review and submission are welcome in the usual way. I do
> suggest that we avoid any further cleanup patches that touch lots of lines
> or lots of files until after the 2017 release, to make life easier on those
> preparing work for that release and merging fixes forward.
>
> After we ship 2017, and have incorporated any bug fixes we want to back
> port, I will make a final 5.1 patch release and declare that branch closed
> to future work. Similarly, I'll make another 2016 patch release, and
> thereafter that branch will have the policy of being open only to fixes for
> things that might affect scientific results.
>
> My focus will be on the integration of Aleksei's PME-on-GPU
> implementation, as well as several non-code GROMACS activities.
>
> Erik hopes to rush out some new templated kernel infrastructure, but he
> has a grant application on April 6, so perhaps we will relax the April 1
> cutoff for that - but based on history, there will be no promises either
> way ;-)
>
> David's energy analysis framework is pretty close to good shape, so some
> final effort there would be a nice achievement.
>
> Berk hopes to get in some more of his conserved quantities for
> integrators, and perhaps with Viveca some of the AWH implementation (that
> needs a lot of refactoring, however...)
>
> Are there any other things people would like to flag for attention? Are
> there good reasons to suggest alternative dates?
>
> Mark
>
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