[ODE] 0.6 release branch

[Remi Ricard]

Hi,

> The old two-branch approach seemed to stifle development too much to
> be worth it - for those of us that want stable builds, we just need
> clearly-flagged points that are known to be stable, and hopefully new
> stable flags with fair regularity (every couple of months).  There's
> no need for a separate branch; I generally assume that a known stable
> release is going to be up to a couple of months behind the unstable
> stuff and simply wait until the unstable gets to another stable point
> (or, say "bah!" and grab the unstable anyways).
>   

The problem I see with this approach is:

Sometime it can be really hard to add a new feature and include all the 
new code between #ifdef
Someday, you will touch some code that is stable and you might break 
things and you will find out only later.

Remi
>   
>> When that time comes, what do I do with the repository? Do I make an
>> 0.6 bug-fix-only branch? That's what I would do if this were my day
>> job project, but it isn't. Should I just tag 0.6-rc1 and keep working
>> on the trunk?
>>
>> I realize that there are people who want to use ODE in a production
>> environment and want a stable release to build upon. I understand and
>> share that sentiment, BUT this is an open-source project and I don't
>> want to stifle this recent burst of progress. I'm inclined to let
>> development continue unfettered on the trunk, with frequent releases,
>> until someone volunteers to manage a stable release branch
>>