http://www.chromecode.com/2011/02/why-g ... d-yet.html

In a past life, I would tell them to invest in Microsoft Project or any Gantt chart software, define deliverables as well as resources and desired timelines, and then get the project released in stages depending on when the deliverables get done. Then again, I'm no longer an Engineer much less a project manager so I guess I will still have the wait like the rest of you all. Still, it would be cool if they posted such a Gantt chart so that we all can see where they feel they are at.

I would be happy to see some Windows binaries get uploaded like the tarballs are.Then they could get more bug reports.I am not picky, just one a month maybe?

Is that too much to ask... really?

I don't envy what these guys try to do. To get back on track, you need quite a lot of motivation and time from developers. Where you get that, when developers are volunteers who mostly have only annoyed users with bug reports and "I must have this feature" wish lists as a reward? In "normal" paid work you have salary, benefits and usually some nice social environment for work. Here we have a very small team with only very good intentions.

I wish Gimp would get same kind of financial and organizational support as Blender does. There seems to be a lot of good things going there.

Let's all give Gimp developers support. We really need to be more grateful what we already have. I use 2.7.1 as my main tool in 2D. It's a lot more solid and usable than many commercial packages. Sure, it has quirks, but then what doesn't.

As a professional software developer and currently project manager, I really appreciate what this project is doing and as a hobby artist I really like the results. I'm happy with my situation, I wish better for Gimp team.

I agree with kimppi's statement above. People really need to stop rushing the developers though, and be happy of what they have to work with either 2.6.11, or 2.7.1. Both incredibly great, and I'm willing to wait as long as it takes for Gimp 2.8.

I'm thankful for all of the hard work the developers have been doing! I used to be involved in software development, and I must make a point of how difficult it can be some times. Gimp is a pretty big undertaking and their great work can't be acknowledged enough! I wish I was still an active coder, where I could help with the project. I couldn't think of a more rewarding project to work on. Gimp developers are A++ in my book!

GIMP is a very impressive program, and all developers are to be commended on their work. Still, from a development perspective, it's quite remarkable that a large and sprawling project like GIMP would develop features directly in master branch; I would have thought policies like this to have been resolved by the time they moved to GIT vcs (easy branching is, after all, one of the main points of using GIT in the first place).
It's good though that they have identified the bottleneck and work to streamline it. Once they keep master "clean" and feature work is happening in branches, new stable/development versions should be much easier to release.
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Griatch

Griatch, there are only about three developers, with little time to develop. What one of them actually does is probably the main branch anyway.

In larger teams and bigger contexts, you are absolutely correct, of course.

@kimppi
I'm not dissing them, it's of course easy to be wise in hind-sight. I was just surprised at the under-use of GIT functionality, I would have thought a feature-branch (gatekeeper) policy would have evolved naturally. Anyway, they seem intent to fix this now, so all is good.

Number of developers is not the point by the way. MyPaint is an example of a small dev-team using VCS tools effectively in this regard. All contributors have their own branches (even I have one, despite only writing translation files!). People are working on features and fixes stand-alone in their branches, and only when they are stable enough (and deemed to be something wanted in the program) the maintainer reviews the feature and merges it into master in one go. For this reason, it's perfectly feasible for a user like me to track MyPaint-GIT master also for production usage - it's rock steady and is the first to get bug fixes. For the MyPaint devs, a new "stable release" is basically just a matter of packaging the latest GIT version with an installer at suitable intervals. A delayed feature just stays in its branch and doesn't delay anything. In one of my own projects (which is very small) we even use SVN branches for new features in order to keep master as clean as possible ...
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Griatch

@Griatch: I'm not very fluent in my English, it seems (joke: I'm shouldn't be fluent in anything, I'm a Finn). Let me rephrase: I agree in all points you made. I'm Subversion user myself. I'm somewhat interested in GIT also, it seems to be preferred choice nowadays. I think I see the usability and organizational points in using branches, even if I really hate to do complex merges.

What I actually meant that there probably aren't many branches ongoing in Gimp if there is relatively little activity (small team, lots of support work, etc.). Also, if they develop many branches, libraries and support tools together, it may be developer's preference to keep the amount of trackable items as low as possible to maintain control of the situation.

But I'm guessing, which is a sin itself. So, I'm not disagreeing, I'm just pointing out that VCS system may not be high in their problem list. They SAID that main branch is blocking development, but to me it seems that the problem is just some core development issue, which is blocking the main branch.

I sound REALLY boring, sorry. Argh. All work and no play makes kimppi a dull boy. Back to drawing...

@kimppi

Lol, I'm Swedish and that's a Finn-joke I've not heard yet.

Completely unrelated to the GIMP status: I personally prefer Bazaar over GIT, it is just so much more intuitive. Even though I use SVN on my central online repository (it is, after all very well known), I do bzr update and bzr commit etc instead, and use bazaar for all my local coding.
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Griatch

Anyone here that has compiled 2.7.2, can you tell me if it has the following?
layer groups
dynamic brush settings
tabbed image mode
single window mode
rotating brushes
Because 2.7.1 does, and i am very happy with it.
Even though it's a test version Gimp-2.7.1 is actually very stable.
Add Rob A's newest ShellOut.py script and you have a nice setup.

In my opinion anyways.