Hi all,
Hi Michael,
I think it's time to discuss about 0.9.2. First we don't release it tomorrow. Second it is not ready for a release because it is not stable enough. Third do there be any missing features or general problems which prevent us from starting snapshots and RCs for a 0.9.2 release? Fourth should we still maintain RPMS for a small number of distributions? Fifth which items are necessary for a minimal usable documentation?
Well, I think we are far from being ready for a release of the new version of OpenCA because there are a lot of bugs here and there we should fix before having one snapshot usable (see my email on the "submit" buttons). Also I am not really happy with the looking of the menu items - If you don't have arguments against it I want to work on it.
About RPMS I guess we should maintain RPMS at least for RedHat and SuSe.
1. Schedule
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There is no exact schedule. We start the discussion now. So who should know when we finished :)
Ok. My proposal is to fix the small things - having the snap usable in every part - and then starting the snapshots and RCs. If we start fixing the code I guess we can have the release ready for november.
2. Stability
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0.9.2 will include a lot of new features. These features must be tested. Many people will go from 0.9.0 or 0.9.1 to 0.9.2 and think it is a complete new software. It uses a changed install method. There are no sheets and finally you have to login! So it will be no surprise if we need more time for testing than for 0.9.1.
Here the documentation is really important and should be CLEAR where to put hands to configure the files. I think it needs some work about what options are available for channels/login and default values.
About this I noticed the AC module does not accept "empty" parameters when configuring channels for pki or RAs so, after a brand new installation it complains almost about every parameter in the default configuration files. We have two options: changing the default values to be suitable for a "normal" apache installation or changing the AC module so it can accept ".*" values without complaining about them.
4. Distros
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Distributions are the next big problem. Should OpenCA publish packages?
My answer is: yes. The problem is that this requires time, is there anybody who wishes to help in this ?
There are many Linux based distributions, BSD styles and commercial[...]
outdated. I think it is better to have no RPMs than to have outdated RPMS for only a small number of Linux distributions.
As I said before I think we should keep updated rpms for a very small number of systems. Actually I guess it could be useful to have packages for RedHat at least, SuSe is the next on the list. Other systems can use the provided RPMS with very small changes... BSD and Solaris are the next on the list, but I guess someone else should take the task, not us.
5. Documentation
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Which docs do you really need? Which docs can you write by your own? The documentation for 0.9.2 will be much better than for any other former release and the new documentation will be much more reliable because it is in CVS.
I think we could enable the installation of an online reference so that the HTML version is accessible from within the web interfaces. At least from the CA.
P.S. before somebody asks; I try to integrate OpenSC smartcards as HSM but actually I have trouble with their PKCS#11 module. If we ever get OpenSC or MuscleCard working then we will add it to 0.9.2.
I know it could be really useful, but I would integrate it into 0.9.3. The problem with this release is that we added too much code and we are still integrating new features.
We should stop adding and start fixing now, so we can come up with a new release, I guess, in a couple of months (I want it to be stable, and the new code is far from it).
--
C'you,
Massimiliano Pala
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Dr. Massimiliano Pala [OpenCA Project Manager] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Tel.: +39 (0)59 270 094
http://www.openca.org Fax: +39 178 221 8225
http://openca.sourceforge.net Mobile: +39 (0)347 7222 365
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