Re: NetBSD 6.0

[Alistair Crooks <agc%pkgsrc.org@localhost>]

On Sun, Sep 25, 2011 at 04:59:56AM +0000, Christos Zoulas wrote:
> In article <4E7EB148.1040405%fastmail.fm@localhost>,
> David Howland  <metalliqaz%fastmail.fm@localhost> wrote:
> >Way back in September 2009, Alistair gave a presentation that predicted 
> >a 6.0 release in Summer 2010 
> >(http://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/netbsd_developer_summit_in_cambridge). 
> >  It is now Autumn 2011... what happened?
> 
> Well, things did not work out as planned. But we are getting close to
> be feature complete now...

Just to expand on this a bit more:

        src/doc/NetBSD-6

has the headline items which will be in the next release.  In
particular, support for kernel modules needs a little more work, Xen
suspend/resume will also need some more testing, and we'd also like to
have Cherry's Xen MP branch merged.  From a personal PoV, I'd like to
see the kernel-based iSCSI initiator contributed by Wasabi move from
othersrc to src, and riz and I have been working on that for a while
now.

As to the delay - we had an idea what we wanted to go into NetBSD-6,
and have stayed close to that idea.  Not very agile, no, and, with
hindsight, we would probably not do it that way again.  But that's
where we are, and 6 will be a huge advance on 5 that I believe it's
well worth the wait.  So much so, that I run 5.99.* on all of my
machines (except one vm in a colo).

Now I don't want to make any hostages to fortune, but I'd really like
to see a 6.0 release in 2011.  Really.  We have still to branch for 6,
but the testing framework (thanks, guys and gals) have meant that the
long quiet period for testing and fixup after branching and before
release is drastically reduced - still there, but easier to see
regressions as and when they happen - so we believe that our release
cycle time will be drastically improved in this area.

Regards,
Alistair