[asterisk-users] Asterisk 12.0.0-alpha1 Now Available!

[Asterisk Development Team]

The Asterisk Development Team is pleased to announce the first alpha release of
Asterisk 12.0.0.  This release is available for immediate download at
http://downloads.asterisk.org/pub/telephony/asterisk/releases

All interested users of Asterisk are encouraged to participate in the
Asterisk 12 testing process.  Please report any issues found to the issue
tracker, https://issues.asterisk.org/jira. All Asterisk users are invited to
participate in the #asterisk-bugs channel to help communicate issues found to
the Asterisk developers. It is also very useful to see successful test reports.
Please post those to the asterisk-dev mailing list (http://lists.digium.com).

The first preliminary test release of Asterisk 12 is an alpha release, not a
beta release. Due to the size and scope of the changes in Asterisk 12, both an
alpha test cycle and a beta test cycle will be performed. While users are
encouraged to participate in both test cycles, users who choose to participate
in the alpha release testing should understand that an alpha release has not
undergone all of the community testing that a beta release goes through.

Asterisk 12 is the next major release series of Asterisk. It will be a Standard
release, similar to Asterisk 10.  For more information about
support time lines for Asterisk releases, see the Asterisk versions page:
https://wiki.asterisk.org/wiki/display/AST/Asterisk+Versions

For important information regarding upgrading to Asterisk 12, please see the
Asterisk wiki:

https://wiki.asterisk.org/wiki/display/AST/Upgrading+to+Asterisk+12

A short list of some of the new major features includes:

* A new SIP channel driver and accompanying SIP stack named chan_pjsip has been
  added. This new channel driver is based on the PJSIP SIP stack by Teluu. It
  includes support for the vast majority of features currently in chan_sip,
  as well as numerous architectural improvements that alleviate pain points
  present in the legacy SIP channel driver. Users who wish to use the new SIP
  channel driver are encouraged to read the instructions on installing and
  configuring PJSIP for Asterisk on the Asterisk wiki at
  https://wiki.asterisk.org/wiki/x/J4GLAQ. Detailed instructions on configuring
  the new SIP stack in Asterisk can be found on the Asterisk wiki as well, at
  https://wiki.asterisk.org/wiki/x/hYCLAQ. Test reports of successful use of
  chan_pjsip, with endpoint details, in addition to bug reports, are most
  welcome.

* The Asterisk RESTful Interface (ARI) has been added. This interface lets
  external systems harness the telephony primitives within Asterisk to develop
  their own communications applications. Communication with Asterisk is done
  through a REST interface, while asynchronous events from Asterisk are
  encoded in JSON and sent via a WebSocket. More information on ARI can be found
  at https://wiki.asterisk.org/wiki/x/lYBbAQ

* Major standardization of the Asterisk Manager Interface and its events have
  occurred within this version. In particular, the names of Asterisk channels
  no longer change and are stable throughout the lifetime of the channel.
  More information on the changes in AMI can be seen in the AMI 1.4
  Specification at https://wiki.asterisk.org/wiki/x/dAFRAQ

* All bridging within Asterisk is now performed using the Asterisk Bridging API,
  which previously was only used by the ConfBridge application. This affords
  Asterisk users greater stability, and has resulted in the abstraction of
  channel masquerades, renaming, and other internal implementation details. It
  also allows for the seamless transition between two-party and multi-party
  bridges using core features.

And much more!

More information about the new features can be found on the Asterisk wiki:

https://wiki.asterisk.org/wiki/display/AST/Asterisk+12+Documentation

A full list of all new features can also be found in the CHANGES file.

http://svnview.digium.com/svn/asterisk/branches/12/CHANGES

For a full list of changes in the current release, please see the ChangeLog.

http://downloads.asterisk.org/pub/telephony/asterisk/releases/ChangeLog-12.0.0-alpha1

Thank you for your continued support of Asterisk!