[asterisk-users] Discussion: Are we ready to leave 1.4 behind?

[Danny Nicholas]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com [mailto:asterisk-users-
> bounces at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Olle E. Johansson
> Sent: Wednesday, April 27, 2011 2:34 PM
> To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion
> Subject: [asterisk-users] Discussion: Are we ready to leave 1.4 behind?
> 
> Friends,
> 
> We have a discussion on asterisk-dev about the maintenance of the 1.4
> branch. According to the release plans, support for 1.4 was scheduled to
> close in April 2011 - basically now. After that, only security patches
> would be committed. This is already a delay from the original plan
> published by Russell Bryant.
> 
> Unfortunately, I think this is way too early. My feeling and experience is
> that 1.8 is not ready for production in the environments I work in - large
> scale installations. Customers are not planning migration and all new
> installs are still 1.4. Tests we've been doing with 1.8 has failed within
> just a short time and so badly that customers has not paid me to spend any
> further time with 1.8.
> 
<snip>
> 
> Not having a supported 1.4 version from the Digium-hosted repositories
> will mean that we will have to move to separate repositories or branch off
> from the main track. I already maintain a ton of subversion branches with
> various patches to 1.4 It takes a lot of time to manage this version that
> is a fork from the main 1.4 branch. I will soon have to start working with
> subversion branches for 1.8 to create a compatible version for my
> customers to test, since most of the patches is not part of 1.8. After a
> few years of doing this, I know the work involved with managing code
> myself.
> 
> The Digium team wants to go ahead and not support 1.4 any more, I want to
> keep 1.4 open for normal bug fixes. What do you think?
> 
> Kevin proposed that the community maintains the 1.4 branch without support
> from the Digium team. I don't think that's a good solution, but it may be
> the only solution.  I haven't got the resources to manage the 1.4 code
> myself, so I won't step forward as a maintainer if I can't get proper
> funding. Anyone else out there that has the time and resources to manage
> the code?
> 
> Feel free to send me mail off list if you have ideas or suggestions on how
> to solve this - or continue the discussion here.
> 
> Regards,
> /Olle
[Danny Nicholas] 
IMO, 1.4 should be kept open for bug fixes since it is the "current working
standard" - until 1.8 works in parallel function-for-function with 1.4, it
is NOT a production-ready release.  What good is a Ferrari with 3 tires?