[gmx-developers] First GROMACS 2019 beta

[Paul bauer]

Hi developers,

As you've probably seen, we've made the first beta release of GROMACS 2019,
which we plan to ship before the new year. Please do help us dogfood things
by building the code on your local machines and trying out your favourite
simulations - the core developers test a lot of things, but we need people
to try things that are our outside of our brain space, too!

We'll be making a TODO list for things we want to have done to test the
code before we make the final release, so watch this space.

There are now branches for release-2019 in both the source and
regressiontest repositories. Those are open for general bug fixing
and for cherry picking (minor) changes from master that didn't meet
the release cut-off. If there's patches currently on master branch that 
should go into the 2019
release, please cherry pick them across (e.g. using the nice button Gerrit
provides). Jenkins has already been set up to verify commits to those 
repositories.
Fixes made on release-2019 will show up in master branch via
a merge commit in the usual way.

We will make updated beta releases weekly based on whatever is currently on
the HEAD of release-2019. 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.

I'll ship the next beta on Nov 1, unless we decide there's something
more important we want fixed and out there sooner!

Release-2018 is also open for bug fixing, but effectively immediately it's
moving to mode where we fix in that branch only bugs that a likely to lead
to wrong science. The same is true for release-2016, where only absolutely
critical fixes will now be admitted before a final patch version likely 
at the
end of the year. The release-2018 branch will stay open for about a year 
for such
fixes, and closed around the time of GROMACS 2020. Fixes in it will be
appear in release-2019 branch via merges in the usual way.

Technically master branch is now back open for general GROMACS work, but
many of the key people will be fully occupied with testing and fixing for
some weeks yet!

Happy coding

Paul Bauer
GROMACS release manager