[asterisk-users] Major changes between 1.4/1.6.1.8/10?

[Gilles]

On Wed, 08 Feb 2012 15:58:43 -0600, "Kevin P. Fleming"
<kpfleming at digium.com> wrote:
>No, unfortunately that's not quite correct. The UPGRADE files list 
>*important* changes that users need to know about because they are 
>changes in behavior of existing functionality. New features, even really 
>useful and widely anticipated ones, that don't cause backwards 
>compatibility issues are only listed in the CHANGES files. For example, 
>the addition of T.38 gateway support in Asterisk 10 only appears in 
>CHANGES, not UPGRADE, because if you don't use it, it doesn't affect you.

Thanks for the tip. However, the CHANGES fille is just a dump of every
single change that was made with each release, so it's hard to tell
why a user should upgrade to the next major release (eg. 1.6 to 1.8).

Is there really no article on the web that sums up what the major
changes were within the four active branches?

I'm running 1.4 on a non-x86 platform, and before I spend time trying
to cross-compile, I need to know 1) whether I really need to upgrade,
and 2) if that's the case, to which version.

Thank you.