[collectd] Version 4.9 release plan and further …

[Florian Forster]

Hi everybody,

I wanted to announce the planned release date for version 4.9. We
usually try to have about three to four months of development between
minor versions of collectd. This timespan has proven to be a good
compromise between letting new features mature and getting said features
out there to the users.

I have chosen two arbitrary[*] dates at which I plan to freeze the Git
repository and release version 4.9.0:

  Feature freeze:   Wednesday, December  9th
  Release 4.9.0:    Monday,    December 21st


Another topic I'd like to start some discussion on is a new major
release, i. e. version 5.0. I think that after 4.9 would be a good time
to aim for a new major release, not only because I find two-digit minor
numbers a bit unaesthetic. There are number of issues we can't fix to
preserve backwards compatibility (the plugin instance vs. type instance
problem of the interface plugin has come up again and again, for
example) and quite some plugins include and default to backwards
compatibility code. I'd very much like to remove that.

I don't think 5.0 will be a radical new version as 4.0 was, but rather a
cleanup and maintenance step. Hopefully writing and using migration
tools will a lot easier than the switch from version 3 to 4.

So, what do you think, does it make sense to aim for a new major version
after 4.9? What changes do you have in mind but couldn't realize due to
compatibility issues? By the way, there is a wiki page[0] in which we
collect stuff that should be changed but breaks backwards compatibility.

Regards,
—octo

[*] Three months from now, one day is as good as the other. But if you
    must have a reason for these dates: If you write them as 20091209
    and 20091221 both have only two prime factors.
[0] <http://collectd.org/wiki/index.php/Plans_for_5.0>
-- 
Florian octo Forster
Hacker in training
GnuPG: 0x91523C3D
http://verplant.org/
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