Hello, I am sending this to provide an update on the development status of Bacula. Recently, I have been struggling to find the motivation to finish the Python implementation in Bacula -- the going is slow, but progressing just the same. The slow going is probably because I am not getting feedback. So, I have decided to do two things: 1. stop current development and write the documentation that is needed. 2. in the near future (next week) release the source code for 1.37.14 as beta software.
On the positive front, we have had several unplanned submissions: direct DVD writing support thanks to Nicolas Boichat, TLS support (built in openssl) thanks to Landon Fuller, and Unicode filename support for Win32 thanks to Thorsten Engel. As you know, I have planned to release version 1.38.0 sometime in June and at the latest in July. To meet this schedule we need a feature freeze at this point. Doing so means that the following two items items originally scheduled for version 1.38 will not be implemented: #3 Migration (Move, Copy, Archive Jobs) #7 Single Job Writing to Multiple Storage Devices However, I consider item #7 to be substantially implemented with the clone feature of version 1.37 where one Job can start a clone of itself, so effectively, the only missing item will be #3 Migration. This is an important feature, and if it doesn't appear in version 1.38, I will most likely add quickly in a follow-on version. Even by dropping those two features, I'm not sure that version 1.38 will be fully ready in June or July. Some of the reasons that items 3 and 7 are not yet started are: - ANSI/IBM Volume labels (unplanned). - A much bigger and more thorough Python implementation than planned. - Multiple drive autochanger support (unplanned). - Big investment of time in trying to get the Rescue CDROM to boot with 2.6 kernels (still not totally successful). - A 1.36.3 release containing a good number of new features back ported from 1.37 (FileSet, ACL enhancements). - Conversion of the manual from wml to LaTeX (the hard work done by Karl Cunningham). - Conversion of the web site to a new format (the hard work done by Michael Scherer). - The new DVD, TLS, and Win32 Unicode. As noted, most of the above work was done by other contributors, but just the same, it also takes my time, testing, and documentation to integrate these items -- time that I am pleased to have spent, but did not originally plan. Despite my plans to drop those two features, version 1.37 now has much more than I ever planned. I am pleased with the features and it's stability, and I hope you will be too. -- Best regards, Kern ("> /\ V_V ReleaseNotes for version 1.37.14: http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/*checkout*/bacula/bacula/ReleaseNotes ------------------------------------------------------- SF.Net email is sponsored by: Tell us your software development plans! Take this survey and enter to win a one-year sub to SourceForge.net Plus IDC's 2005 look-ahead and a copy of this survey Click here to start! http://www.idcswdc.com/cgi-bin/survey?id=105hix _______________________________________________ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users