[asterisk-dev] Thoughts on Asterisk release management

[Michiel van Baak]

On 12:41, Thu 20 Sep 07, Tzafrir Cohen wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 20, 2007 at 07:57:04PM +1000, David Bowerman wrote:
> > Russell,
> > 
> > Good plan! and i'd support it 100%.
> > 
> > chan_mobile is a good case in point. its a 'new feature' that wouldnt
> > appear until 1.6
> > 
> > there are loads of people backporting it to 1.4 because they want it
> > 'earlier' and even some people backporting it to 1.2
> > 
> > shortening the release cycle will give people access to any new
> > feature in manageable chunks.
> 
> I'm trying to understand what you write.
> 
> If you need chan_foobar that was added in 1.9, and your current PBX
> runs 1.5 (released only a year ago), are you sure you'll be able to find
> someone who'll do the backport?
> 
> Won't that channel use a number of new APIs that were introduced in 1.6,
> 1.7 and 1.8? If so, the backporting won't be trivial, or even possible.
> 
> Or will you upgrade your PBX every 3 monthes?
> 

I really like the release cycle of OpenBSD.
They have a strict 6 month release timeframe.
During those 6 months you can grab a snapshot which is
compiled from trunk. This way you can test the upcoming
release in an easy way.

What they do for the snapshots is an install and if they
think the basics work they release the snapshot.

To answer your final question: I do upgrade every 6 months
to stay up-to-date. If this release cycle is strict and you
meet the release dates you can announce those upgrades to
your users long time before the actual update takes place.
Everyone happy :)

just my Eur 0.02
-- 

Michiel van Baak
michiel at vanbaak.eu
http://michiel.vanbaak.eu
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