[asterisk-users] Is this list dead? Or the project?

[Joshua Colp]

Olivier wrote:
> I can't speak for other readers, but from a personal point of view,
> improvements in Asterisk stability and documentation have lead me to
> read this list (or write to) much less frequently.

It's cool to hear that ;)

To give some exposure into what has made this possible (since not 
everyone follows development):

1. Code reviews were added

Every remotely complex change to Asterisk now goes through code review 
to give more people a chance to provide feedback. This has caught a lot 
of issues before the change has even been put into the tree.

2. Tests

Test all the things! We've added tons of tests to cover lots of stuff to 
make sure that we don't break existing functionality. This has caught 
regressions and issues before Asterisk is released. Do we have tests for 
everything? Not yet, but we're working on it.

3. Documentation is in the tree

Long ago the documentation for certain stuff in Asterisk was placed into 
the source code as XML. This has been extended over time to include 
documentation for more types of stuff (manager events for example) and 
in some cases we now *require* documentation or Asterisk will just not 
load. This is an ongoing process but has helped. This XML gets pulled 
out and automatically updated on the wiki[1] as well.

4. We've built frameworks internally

A good foundation for Asterisk has helped stability and development. We 
have solid frameworks for common things that are used everywhere and are 
continuing to add more.

This has been an evolution to make Asterisk better for everyone, and it 
has certainly worked with the help of all Asterisk developers and 
contributors.

So at the beginning of my email I mentioned about not everyone following 
development. If you are on Twitter and want to see the big things 
there's an AsteriskDev[2] account that I tweet things out on. Asterisk 
releases, new additions, major changes, conferences Asterisk developers 
are speaking at, that sort of thing.

[1] http://wiki.asterisk.org/
[2] http://twitter.com/AsteriskDev

Cheers,

-- 
Joshua Colp
Digium, Inc. | Senior Software Developer
445 Jan Davis Drive NW - Huntsville, AL 35806 - US
Check us out at: www.digium.com & www.asterisk.org