[gmx-developers] Second beta release of GROMACS 2019

[Paul bauer]

Hello developers,

I just uploaded the second beta release of GROMACS 2019, with the fixes 
for the
issues found be us and you during the first beta now mostly fixed. The 
plan is still
to ship the new release at the beginning of the new year, so please 
continue to
help us dogfood things by building the code on your local machines and 
trying out your favourite
simulations - we can not test everything ourself here and appreciate 
your help in
identifying and fixing remaining issues in the code!

I know the version got shipped a bit later than I promised in the last mail,
so please accept my apologies for the delay.

Especially, we would like to have tests for:
Different kinds of accelerators tested for the OpenCL support
Tests of simulations for proper use of the update groups

The release-2019 branch is now (mostly) frozen for new code submissions,
and we are planning to only have bug fixing going on in this branch from 
now on.
Any major code changes can continue on master, and we are planning to merge
any changes from the release branches back into it by the usual merge 
commits.

I'm planning to ship another beta in about two weeks time to give you 
enough time
for testing the code and to tell us if there are any issues with it that 
should be fixed before
a release candidate later in December. If you want a bug fix to be in 
the next beta,
please help organize to get the fix made and reviewed. The role of the
release manager is to ship code that's in good shape, not to shepherd every
known issue to be resolved before shipping.

As mentioned before, any bugs found in release-2018 should continue to be
targeted at this version, before we move it to essential fixes only 
after 2019 gets
released next year. At the same time we will retire the release-2016 
branch with
a final patch version. The release-2018 branch will stay open for about 
a year for
fixes that prevent wrong science, and will be closed around the time of 
GROMACS 2020.
Fixes in it will be appear in release-2019 branch via merges in the 
usual way.

Happy coding

Paul Bauer
GROMACS release manager