2. Version Control

As PaPCo is not a ``professional'' piece of software and has been pieced together from the contributions of many people, version control is somewhat problematic. For a time there was no attempt at all to keep track of versions and changes, but as the package is growing this is becoming more important.

Proper version control started with PaPCo 05 and will be documented in this chapter. It is not intended to be an exhaustive list of edits, changes etc, but will document major changes to the PaPCo core only. All routines in the PaPCo core have some history in their headers, but here also no attempt is made to keep a record of all bug fixes or modifications.

Keeping this User's Manual up to date is a major effort. We will not attempt to update this manual whenever any changes is made but will adopt the following strategy:

1.

The Manual will only be updated for major version changes (i.e. version 5.0 to 6.0).

2.

Incremental updates (ie. V6.0 to V6.1) will only be reported via the PaPCo mailing list and only if they effect the user.

3.

Small bug fixes will not be reported.

4.

Important bugs or fixes requested by users will be acted upon and reported on the PaPCo Home Page under the PaPCo Patch Page There will be a downloadable ``patch'' for the user with instructions of how to install it. In this way we avoid having to release a new version of PaPCo whenever there is a fix.

5.

All the patches will be implemented in each new release of PaPCo, and the PaPCo Patch Page will be cleared.