Salome-Meca 2017 and code_aster 13.4 release plan

by the development team.

Quality first

We attach great value to quality: whether it is within the development process or in the different versions of code_aster that are distributed. It is a necessity for any FEA software, more particularly when it is used in the nuclear field.
Several obstacles prevented us from stabilizing versions 12.8 and 13.4 of code_aster on all the platforms usually used in the development process: a supercomputer of the TOP500, a scientific workstation and a 32-bit computing cluster.
To maintain the quality of these versions of code_aster - notably the assurance that no test case is broken on each of the target architectures - it was therefore decided to postpone the stabilization date of versions 12.8 and 13.4. This also leads to postponing the release of Salome-Meca 2017, of which code_aster is a prerequisite.

An adapted schedule

The new deadlines for code_aster and Salome-Meca are shown in the following table.

The aster-full package for version 13.4 (or 14.0) should be released later (probably not before September).