[asterisk-users] Asterisk 1.6.2.18 Now Available

[Jan Bakuwel]

Hi Matt,


On 29/04/11 11:26, Matt Riddell wrote:
> On 29/04/11 11:19 AM, Jan Bakuwel wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I'm about to deliver a production system based on Debian Squeeze and
>> Asterisk 1.6.2.9-2+squeeze1 from the Debian repositories. Asterisk 1.8
>> packages for Debian&  Ubuntu are available from packages.asterisk.org.
>> Observing some recent discussions on this list, it seems that 1.8 might
>> not yet be ready for production use. Would whoever kindly makes the
>> Asterisk 1.8 packages available also consider doing that for 1.6
>> releases? If the build environment has been set up for 1.8, I'd imagine
>> it would be easy to set up something similar for 1.6 releases?
>
> You shouldn't put *any* system into production unless you have a clear
> list of what features you will be providing, and have a way of testing
> that those features work :-)
>
> If you do this then every update can be tested to work with those
> features, and a customer's system shouldn't crash, no matter what
> version you're using.  As I've said 1.8 is working under these
> circumstances for me in production.
>
> One thing I'll note though is that as time goes on and you get better
> at these types of things you'll come up with some pretty crazy tests -
> and still customers will do things you couldn't possibly have thought
> to test.
>
> So, long story short I recommend:
>
> 1. Make a list of the applications and modules you'll be using and a
> list of ways they'll be used.
>
> 2. Disable everything else
>
> 3. Test these apps/functions in the most intense way you can think of
>
> 4. Move the system to production.
>
> The thing here is that if you're able to provide the same system to
> multiple customers then it doesn't end up being such a crazy list of
> things to check.
>

All valid points.

As you say users will still do things I couldn't have possibly imagined.
And some bugs, deadlocks conditions in real time systems for instance
might well be particularly hard to find or write test plans for. The
release notes for 1.6.2.18 state that  some issues (such as deadlocks)
found in previous releases have been addressed.

You didn't answer my question though :-)

Rather than testing and finding issues that have already been resolved,
I'd prefer to have an efficient way to upgrade Asterisk to released
versions. A package system provides an efficient way to do this. The
fact that something like packages.asterisk.org exists seems to prove my
point. Upgrading the system obviously doesn't mean you won't have to do
any testing but it should make the testing more efficient - at least for
"stable" releases.

cheers,
Jan