As Tom Rondeau had announced earlier on the list and as we've discussed on the last two developer conference calls, we are planning a transition in the GNU Radio repository that will result in the current 'next' branch merging back into the 'master' branch, and a release 3.4.0 after a period of stabilization.
How this affects you and what actions you might need to take depend on how you have been obtaining and installing GNU Radio and whether or not you wish to use the new features in the 3.4.x release series. Read on for how we will accomplish the transition and how to prepare your GNU Radio installation for it. This announcement doesn't go into the differences in features between 3.3 and 3.4, but instead focuses on the mechanics of the transition itself. - We will post a release 3.3.1 tarball to ftp.gnu.org. This is a snapshot of the current git master branch (already tagged as v3.3.1, commit is 592153b2). If you have currently installed 3.3.0 from a source tarball, you'll be able to download 3.3.1 and install from that without any impact to your application development. It is, as usual, recommended you do a 'make uninstall' from your current source tree first, to ensure all traces of 3.3.0 are gone prior to installing 3.3.1. Release 3.3.1 is the last planned release of the 3.3.x stable series. - Work is underway by the Debian packager for GNU Radio, Bdale Garbee, to get the 3.3.1 release into Debian (and hence also it's derivatives). If you have installed GNU Radio 3.2.2 binaries from the Debian or Ubuntu package manager, you'll eventually see an update available to install GNU Radio 3.3.1. - We will tag the current master branch as 'master-3.3', for posterity. If you currently have installed GNU Radio via 'git clone', are using the current master branch, and you wish to continue using the 3.3 API for your application development, you will need to update your git repository by checking out the new branch 'master-3.3'. It is unlikely there will any future updates to this branch. - We will merge the current 'next' branch back into 'master'. Those of you who have installed GNU Radio via 'git clone', are using the master branch for your development, and do not switch to using master-3.3, will see a large update in your source tree the next time you update. It is *essential* that you uninstall GNU Radio using 'make uninstall' before this happens, as the new code has many changed file names and directories. Furthermore, you will then need to 'make distclean' or 'git clean -dxf' to restore your repository to a known state before doing the update. Finally, you can then update your repository, get on the new master, then reinstall GNU Radio as usual. Those of you who have already been working with the 'next' branch will only need to update, switch to the 'master' branch, and then continue working without interruption. - At this point, we'll have a new 3.4.x master, and no 'next' branch. Our development focus will be to stabilize this code, test with a wider audience, then release a 3.4.0 tarball (and binary packages if possible.) As has been the practice in the GNU Radio project for a number of years, our intent is that we will only add new code to the stable branch that doesn't break user's application code, while implementing any "API changing" code on a new 'next' branch. So it is expected that after we transition to the new master, most new development will occur there, and we'll start issuing 3.4.1, 3.4.2, etc. When we start working on 3.5 API features, we'll branch a new next. There are a few issues and bug fixes remaining on the current next branch we need to resolve before any of this happens. There are some GNU Radio build issues with the Windows environment and the embedded Linux distribution used with the E100 hardware from Ettus Research. The Ettus Research UHD API will be undergoing a similar stable branch freeze, so our intent is to coordinate efforts to ensure that everything works together appropriately. It has been a longer than usual development cycle with much work from the GNU Radio development community to get to 3.4, and along with the recent new hardware from Ettus Research, we're poised for some exciting new SDR application development. Tom and I are working on a 3.3 -> 3.4 new feature announcement, and will address those topics there. Thanks, Johnathan Corgan Corgan Enterprises LLC _______________________________________________ Discuss-gnuradio mailing list Discuss-gnuradio@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnuradio
