[vtk-developers] development roadmap?

[Ken Martin]

Hello Michael,

Thanks for the feedback. I'll take a stab at addressing some of your
concerns and provide some suggestions. Regarding VTK 4.0 I was
supposed to send out an announcement about a month ago and I forgot.
So... VTK 4.0 is the current release and we believe it mostly works.
We recommend that people only develop to the last formal release. The
only exception is if you must have a feature that is in the nightly
but not in the release.

Part of the reason for this is that we are typically only concerned
about backwards compatibility between releases. If someone adds
something to the nightly and then the developer community (or the
developer herself) realizes there is a better way to structure the API
then it should be done. The other reason for trying to keep people on
the release is that we have a higher confidence that it works, and
installs correctly, and it is easier for users to compare problems and
solutions if they are using the same source code.

Regarding the VTK road map and planning I would suggest setting up a
few FAQ entries with the appropriate questions

What is the release schedule for VTK?

What are the upcoming changles planned for VTK?

etc

then send out an email asking people to fill in the answers, and then
keep them up to date. If you can setup the questions you think are
appropriate on the FAQ, I'll try to answer them. Then it is just a
matter of keeping them up to date. Which reminds me... the entry for
changes since VTK4.0 is almost empty except for David Gobbi and
someone from Kitware. I'm guilty of not adding my changes to this.
Could everyone take a second and add any changes since VTK 4.0
(branched Dec 10th 2001) into the FAQ?

Thanks
Ken