[Nut-upsdev] NUT release plans (post-2.4.1); was Re: ETIME on FreeBSD

[Arnaud Quette]

2010/1/25 Charles Lepple <clepple at gmail.com>:
> On Jan 24, 2010, at 5:45 PM, Alexey Loukianov wrote:
>
>> Are there any release schedule defined for the NUT?
>>
>> Latest release (2.4.1) was done about a year ago (Feb 2009) and
>> accordingly to
>> the SVN log there were a lot of the useful changes (that are surely
>> demanded by
>> the NUT users worldwide) since then. It is widely common for the linux
>> developers to use half-a-year release cycle (RedHat, Canonical, KDE,
>> Gnome) and
>> I think that it might be good to try to stick in with the same policy for
>> the
>> NUT releases. It might give a better integration into the major
>> distributions
>> like Fedora or Ubuntu and will offer the end-users with a better service
>> (unfortunately it is common for the linux end-user nowdays not to be
>> familiar
>> with the SVN and with the software installation from the source code).
>
> Arnaud is in charge of releases, so I will defer to him on the official
> answers.
>
> We planned to include reformatted and reorganized documentation with the
> next release, which was tentatively planned for the beginning of this year.
> On the AsciiDoc branch, Arnaud has made a lot of progress on the website,
> and I still have a few man pages to convert, but we still need to do some
> editing to tie it all together. Having a second set of eyes look over the
> documentation is always helpful (hint, hint).
>
> As I mentioned earlier, I don't think we need to be exactly in sync with the
> rest of the Linux world, and in many cases, asking someone to reconfigure a
> tool tied in with power management every six months is a little excessive.

seconded.

the 6 months cycle is applicable to desktop and bleeding edge features.
NUT would more be on the LTS / server kind, with 18 months cycle.
for the long run, I'm planning to have major releases (2.8 and 3.0)
based on a 18 months timeline, while there will be point releases
(2.6.1, ...) every 6 months to address bugs and small features.
I'm also working with DeviceKit-power aka UPower for the 6 months side...

the fact is that we're currently at a cornerstone:
we are fully revamping the doc and website, and more generally
preparing the future with 2.6 (new UIs, configuration, integration and
advanced features, more QA, ...). And all this is a huge work, with
few (though excellent) manpower!

the remainders for 2.6.0 are mostly related to the doc/website.
the manpages are mostly done (kudos Charles ;-), the website and User
manual are not far from completion.
this leaves the Developer Guide, which should be quite
straightforward, and the Packager Guide which can be addressed later.

that being said, help is always welcomed ;-)

cheers,
Arnaud
-- 
Linux / Unix Expert R&D - Eaton - http://www.eaton.com/mgeops
Network UPS Tools (NUT) Project Leader - http://www.networkupstools.org/
Debian Developer - http://www.debian.org
Free Software Developer - http://arnaud.quette.free.fr/