[IPython-dev] ToDo for 0.4.0

[Fernando Perez]

Hi all,

I'd like to put out a list of things (small) I'd like to do before relabeling 
the current code as 0.4.0.  In the past few months I think most key bugs have 
been squashed and IPython's user base seems to be growing, so I have a certain 
trust that nothing too ugly lurks underneath (besides, I use it every day myself).

After 0.4, and now that we have a decent CVS setup in place, it might be 
feasible to start rewriting some of the infrastructure with an eye for 
integration with pycrust.

I've cc-ed some people who in the past have dealt with some of these issues, 
but all hands are always welcome.  If people are bothered by this, I can stop 
and use the list only. I only do this occasionally if I want some people 
specifically not to miss a message, since most of us tend to ignore mailing 
list traffic when busy.

Here are the things I see as low-hanging fruit before calling the code 0.4:

- Finish X/Emacs stuff.  This requires a small amount of work on my part 
(cleaning up the internal history) and some from Alex.  Mainly, I'd need Alex 
to double-check the manual because a lot of stuff there in the emacs section 
is outdated.  And we'd need to decide whether to package the *.el files with 
ipython or not.

- Man pages.  Jack wrote some man pages for Debian, I'd like to get those into 
the main distro.  Right now ipython has 'ipython --help', but it's always nice 
to have real man pages.

After these two things, I see the next two as lower priority (could be done 
during the life of 0.4.x):

- rlcompleter2: If the filename completion is finished, I'd REALLY want to 
include support for it within ipython.  This is Holger's baby, and it's quite 
impressive.

- Windows installer: I spend several hours trying to build a proper Windows 
GUI installer, and failed.  I can get the thing to build, but I can not figure 
out how to have the post-install script do all it needs to do.  The problem is 
that the script gets run from path\to\python\Scripts, and it has no idea of 
where all the files it wants to copy are to begin with.  When it runs from an 
unzipped directory, it's fine: all relevant files are in the doc/ subdir from 
the zipball, so life is good. But once the GUI thing moves it over elsewhere, 
how is it going to know where the original files were?

Each time I summon the courage to boot into Windows I end up failing miserably 
with seemingly simple tasks.  I'm sure all these things can be done, I'm just 
fairly incompetent with Windows issues and I simply don't have the time (nor 
the interest, to be honest ;) to learn.

So anyone who can help with Windows issues is welcome to jump in.  Otherwise 
ipython will continue to only have .zip distribution for Windows in the future 
[not to mention other bugs in that platform which I haven't the foggiest idea 
how to solve :( ]

Best regards, and thanks to all for your help so far.

f.