[asterisk-dev] About asterisk development plans

[Saúl Ibarra]

Hi,

I'm happy to see my co-worker posted what we talked about yesterday :)
See inline comments.

> It is indeed a big problem that I meet all the time. Do you have any
> proposal on
> how to change it?
>

Let's try!

> Digium pays for almost all of the development, especially the bug
> fixing part, today.
> They have a large team that spends a large part of their time in the
> bug tracker,
> which you see in the Changes file. They do what they can and are very
> skilled.
> We have beta-releases and rc-releases of new 1.4 releases for feedback
> from
> the community. And we still have the issues you describe.
>

That's true, but how many people (community) do really test release
candidates? If we are having these kind of problems whith point
releases I believe the community won't try release candidates as much
as we wanted to.

> Is Asterisk simply too complex to get stability on all the supported
> platforms,
> with all the supported protocols and drivers for various devices? Is it
> possible to fix it?
>

It IS complex due to the multiple protocols and applications it has,
but I believe it can be fixed.

> It may be an issue of priorities too. Maybe we can implement some
> system to
> help Leif Madsen prioritize among the bugs. Bugs that I feel are
> critical, like
> the early media audio from PRI links, may be unimportant for you. For
> me it's
> a showstopper. You might have something else. How should this be
> handled?
>

Well, I think we are approaching a 'breaking point'. As murf pointed
out for the CDRs, development shoud 'stop' for a while and start
thinking about the future. Asterisk 1.4 has a very large set of
features that can be 'enough' for a lot of people.

It would be nice to see a new branch in which only architectural
changes where made in order to improve asterisk core stability. We
don't need new features, we need the core to be stable enough to be
able to support new features but being bullet-proof :)

[snip]

> I personally think that the new release policy makes 1.6 impossible to
> use
> in any production environment. I've said that many times, so it's not
> any news
> for any one. I'm maintaining a private version of Asterisk 1.4 for my
> carrier
> customers with backports of smaller changes in the 1.6 branch (all
> available
> in my svn directory). The cost of evaluating a new version is high and
> 1.6
> release policy is not acceptable, since the core keep changing too fast.
>
> The plan I've outlined earlier on this list, which got support from
> Russell,
> was at some point to fork the 1.6 code and create a kind-of "Centos"
> distribution with long-term support for this group. So far, no
> customer has
> shown interest and with the state of the SIP channel in the 1.6 tree
> (Digium doesn't like me saying that, but anyway...) I don't see
> it coming soon. For such a branch to succeed, we will need a test
> team that works with it and a developer team that focuses on it,
> which requires external funding. Large scale carrier installations is
> not
> within Digium's commercial focus today.
>

I DO agree with this: I understand the need of adding new features and
I understand that with the old releade modle this couldn't be
achieved, but I also think this has lead to a more unstable product
(speaking in general).

Let's do some math: before Asterisk 1.6 came Digium and the comunity
had to support 1.2 security fixes and asterisk 1.4 bugfixes. Now with
Asterisk 1.6 more and more versions have to be maintained (1.6.0 won't
be unmaintained untill 1.6.3) by the same people, so the effort has to
be divided.

[snip]

Last but not least I'd like to say that this is my two cents and I can
be completely wrong, but because I like Asterisk I'd like it to be the
best.


Best regards,

                                 Saúl.


Keep it up!



>
> PS: For CDR's, there's a very good developer available, Steve Murphy,
> who has asked for support for his work on the asterisk-biz mailing list.
> If you want CDR to be worked on, contact him and make an arrangement.
> The more sponsors that steps in, the cheaper it will get for everyone.

PS: Maybe we can call for a super-bounty in voip-info?



-- 
Saúl -- "Nunca subestimes el ancho de banda de un camión lleno de disketes."
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