[Bioperl-l] bioperl 0.7.1

[Jason Stajich]

Next release of bioperl, bugfix release 0.7.1, is being prepared.  I'll be
shepherding this one out the door with help from Ewan and Hilmar.

Our plan, is to release bug fix 0.7.1 and then begin work on bioperl 0.9
developer release off the main branch.  We plan to shoot for a bioperl 1.0
release by the end of the summer.  We look forward to the chance to take
stock and get feedback from developers and users alike at BOSC 2001 which
will help direct the content of the 1.0 release.

What's on the docket for 0.7.1:

- Bug fixes only, none of the newly added modules since 0.7 branch.
- migrate all of bugfixes that only made it to main-trunk to the
  07 branch.
- Update POD docs to be compliant, example scripts to use proper syntax of
  modules
- Fix remaining bugs (list in progress http://www.bioperl.org/wiki/html/BioPerl/071BugList.html)
- Insure X-Platform compatibility

See: http://www.bioperl.org/wiki/html/BioPerl/BioperlRelease0.7.1.html
for up to date version of the TODO list.

As a reminder if you want to help bug fix (and we WANT you to help!),
checkout the 07 branch like this
% cvs -d :ext:yourname@bioperl.org:/home/repository/bioperl co -r
branch-07 -d branch-07 bioperl-live 

Some things we hope will happen this summer after the 0.7.1 release
depending on the level of help from the community.  Your ideas are welcome
here too.

- bioperl developer release 0.9

- an open calling for perl scripts which you would like to be incorperated
  into bioperl.  We will do our best to rewrite these scripts in the
  BioPerlStyle and/or make them into modules.  This includes
  everything from microarray data manipulation to pipeline scripts to
  protein analysis, FASTA parsing, or blast automation. I'd
  love to see us branch out to new areas based on perl use cases in the
  biological community.

- Website revamp and assigning responsibilities to keep certain
  sections up-to-date.   Decisions about where user docs should live -
  wiki or plain html, and how news will be announced to the community
  more regularly.

- preparation of a full length paper about bioperl

- Some hardware and server OS upgrades.

Thanks to everyone who has helped maintain a stable code base so far, we
look forward to the upcoming releases and making bioperl a useful product
to more users and developers.

----
Jason on behalf of the bioperl core
Ewan Birney, Chris Dagdigian, Hilmar Lapp, Jason Stajich