We recently found a small, but annoying, bug. This bug only impacts the Orekit tests. In other words, it does not impact the main library.
Details about the bug are given here: https://gitlab.orekit.org/orekit/orekit/-/issues/744
To summarize: Since the 1st January 2021 an Orekit’s unit test fails. It fails because the value we want to verify in the test changes each year. Therefore, the value changed the 1st January 2021. The value is good but it does not correspond to the reference value calculated for 2020.
Fixing this bug seems to be easy. However, I have to ask you two questions.
Is the bug impacting your applications using Orekit?
Do you think we must create a patch? Or the fix can wait release 11.0, since it just impacts the tests.
As the library itself is fine and the failure is limited to an ill-conceived test,
I think it can wait for next version.
It should be fixed in the develop branch, though.
Let’s wait for other opinions about that, I will ping the PMC to see if they think a patch release 10.3.1 is needed. Anyway, for patch like this, the governance allows for a fast track release without PMC vote formally required, so we could do it if we want.
I completely agree with Luc.
The bug only concerns a badly designed test, it should be fixed in the develop branch, but it does not affect the library itself, so I don’t think it requires a specific patch release.