[ODE] Proposal: ODE "unstable"

[Jeffrey Smith]

As one of the maintainers, I have to apologize for being so unreliable
about applying new patches and so forth.  The major reason, which Vadim
mentioned, is just a lack of time.  It takes time to read every mail
sent to the list, check if there are patches included, integrate the 
proposed changes (assuming that actual working code has been submitted)
and then thoroughly testing on "both" platforms, in both Debug mode and 
Release mode, with both dReal=float and dReal=double.

To make this easier for me and the other maintainers, I agree that we
should have a "mature" branch and a "unstable" branch.  All submitted
patches would go into the "unstable" branch almost immediately, and
after testing and any needed bugfixes, would be merged into the mature
branch.  One danger of this approach is that some patches might be 
insufficiently tested before they are merged, and later cause problems 
or conflict with other patches.

Secondly, I propose that all bug-fixes and patches be sent to the list
with "PATCH" in the subject, for example "PATCH: Convex body collisions."
Basically, a short title like you would give a bug in a bug tracking
database.  This would make it easier for us to identify submitted code.
(I need not mention that all patches must be submitted in diff/patch
format, against the CVS head.)

Also, we need some volunteer testers.  I just don't have the time to
run eight different test suites for every patch in a timely fashion.
I can easily run some simple tests, and determine if the patch compiles
and doesn't break any obvious functionality, but we need some real
testing code that produces results which can be compared numerically
with known "good" results from the mature branch.  Any takers?

-jeff