Merge pull request #4 from GenericMappingTools/nov2018update

Add new progress report

Author: PaulWessel

README.md

@@ -20,7 +20,7 @@ The GMT Team shall update the Steering Committee with timely reports. It has pro
 reasonable to provide these reports twice a year as a quarter is a bit too short to add
 much new material.
 
-* [October 2018](reports/2018-10.md)
+* [November 2018](reports/2018-11.md)
 * [March 2018](reports/2018-03.md)
 * [September 2017](reports/2017-09.md)
 * [March 2017](reports/2017-03.md)

reports/2018-10.md

@@ -0,0 +1,103 @@
+# Progress Report 2018-11-6
+
+Since our [last report in March, 2018](2018-03.md) we have continued work on several
+parallel tracks:
+
+* We have released our final GMT 4 version in July 2018, the GMT 4.5.18 release.
+* We have maintained the GMT 5.4 branch which is the current stable release branch,
+  releasing 5.4.4 (the latest official release) on July 1, 2018.
+* We have ported all of our subversion repository and issue tracking to GitHub.
+* We have secured some funding from EarthScope for the new modern mode.
+* We are working on stabilizing GMT 6.0.0 beta and modern mode implementation.
+* We have secured funding for the upcoming Portugal and California developer summits in 2019.
+
+## Farewell to GMT 4.5.x
+
+We have issued our final GMT 4 release this July 1.  This is version 4.5.18 and this
+terminates our involvement with bug fixes and point releases for this series.  GMT 5
+was released 5 years ago and any issues discovered in 4.5.18 need to be reproduced
+in GMT 5 where we will make corrections.
+
+## Maintenance of 5.4
+
+Because all our development is now taking place in GMT 6, the 5.4 branch is only
+updated when a bug is found.  We anticipate to make a 5.4.5 release shortly, which
+has been held up by the GitHub transition. The 5.4.5 release will simplify
+installation and building of the MB-system with GMT5 and 6.
+
+## GMTSAR 2018 workshop
+
+Wessel, Luis and Uieda attended the annual GMTSAR workshop at Scripps in August.
+Due to a late conflict, Wessel missed most of the workshop but arrived on the
+last day.  GMT developers then stayed the weekend at Scripps and collaborated
+on GMT transition activities (below).
+
+## GitHub Transition activities
+
+During the GMTSAR 2018 workshop at Scripps, three of the GMT Developers (Wessel,
+Luis, Uieda) spent a weekend where we ported the entire GMT 5/6 subversion
+repository to GitHub. Using git will be the fourth version control system that
+GMT has used over the decades (SCCS, CVS, subversion, now git).  The new
+repository (https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/gmt) is online at GitHub and
+is independent of the University of Hawaii. We expect that this transition will make it
+easier for community members to make contributions to the GMT code and documentation.
+For now, only the source code and the issue tracking has been migrated, but we are
+working on rebuilding the entire documentation process as well.  We have started
+planning the first of two GMT developer summits to prepare our plans for how a GMT
+transition can be accomplished. All six GMT developers are confirmed to attend the
+summit which will be held in Faro, Portugal from January 20-27, 2019.  Being off-season
+and with 3 developers in Europe, this was the cheapest and soonest meeting we could
+have.
+
+## GMT 6
+
+With the move to GitHub we have laid the foundation for future development.
+We have added Continuous Integration (CI) which means each time a pull request
+is made the whole suite is compiled and tests are run to make sure the changes
+in the pull request do not break anything in the repository.  GitHub also provides
+an Issues list similar to our old Issues on the Wiki at SOEST.  We still need to
+port older bug reports to GitHub as well as establish a forum similar to the one
+at SOEST.  Finally, we need to automate the building of the documentation so that
+we can move off the GMT server at SOEST.  By not relying on SOEST computers and
+hosting we are making it easier for a community of developers and users to assist
+with the maintenance of GMT.
+GMT 6 is slowly getting more stable, and with the separate funding from EarthScope
+we are implementing and testing the modern mode plus the new modules for movie
+making (movie.c) and Google Earth quadtree imaging (grd2kml.c).  We hope GMT 6 beta
+will be ready early in 2019.
+
+## Summits in 2019
+
+We have secured NSF funding for our two proposed summits.  At this point we have
+made reservations for the GMT Developer Summit in Faro, Portugal for Jan 20-27,
+taking advantage of very cheap rates for accommodation and travel.  During this
+summit we will work up plans for the transition and these will be circulated do
+the GMT Steering Committee as well as NSF.  We will incorporate their feedback
+and prepare a White Paper on the GMT transition for further discussion at the
+California Summit in the summer of 2019.
+
+## Python package
+
+Development of the Python wrapper has continued with added support for netCDF grids
+through the [xarray library](http://xarray.pydata.org/), a new sphinx extension for
+inserting GMT/Python plots into documentation, new module wrappers developed by new
+contributors to the project, functions to download sample datasets, and better reporting
+of C API errors.
+
+The current implementation is running into a few limitations around building new module
+wrappers and tutorial documentation. A re-implementation of some of the underlying code
+is under way, which should make it easier to keep the documentation in sync with
+examples and the GMT documentation.
+
+## Outreach
+
+Some of the GMT developers (Wessel, Luis, Uieda) met with a group of Scripps graduate
+students and postdocs during the GMTSAR workshop to gather feedback and talk about GMT
+development. In particular, they discussed opportunities for getting involved in the
+project and how this process can be made more accessible. The overall reception was
+positive and resulted in the some feedback filed as issues in the new Github repository.
+We hope to keep this communication channel open to recruit new contributors in the near
+future.
+
+Uieda gave an update on the GMT/Python status at the 2018 Scipy Conference in July (a
+recording of the talk is available on Youtube: https://youtu.be/6wMtfZXfTRM).