[Gluster-devel] 1.3.pre6 release

[Anand Babu Periasamy]

1.3 went thorugh a rough release cycle mainly because of merging
name-space-cache, inode based framework, io-cache, self-heal features
from future mile stones and numerous other improvements. Roadmap
itself evolved based on community feedbacks. We assure you in future
that, we will not bring in such changes once transition to pre-release
stage. 

1.3's initial goal was only performance. As we progressed, we realized
that many of you were not ready to put 1.3 in to production use
without fsck functionality. Because glusterfs is designed for peta bytes
capacity, fsck downtime is simply un-affordable. We needed to bring in 
self-heal.  Self-heal in turn required name space cache for
efficiency. On the other hand, Brent Nelson's bugs required inode
based framework to fix. Doing so will give complete POSIX
compliance. Inode based framework again required name space
cache. Another problem with inode based framework is, it would break
compatibility to previous clients. Because GlusterFS is not yet that
popular, it is OK to fix it in pre stage than breaking compatibility
between 1.3 and 1.4. 

Finally the long wait is over. Even GNU Emacs 22.1 and Linux 2.6.22
has bugs that are constantly reported and fixed. GlusterFS too has
reached a stage that it is good to be released to general purpose
community. As more users start testing GlusterFS, we will hear more
bugs. Fortunately the design of GlusterFS allows us to turn around
with bug fixes in few hours (if we are awake ;).

We have fixed a hard date for GlusterFS-1.3.0 to 31st July 2007. We
have closed all currently reported bugs. As of now, code is undergoing
through a tighter review. Lots of checks are added to catch errors and
handle them gracefully instead of resulting in crash. We will complete
internal QA and new round of benchmarks by 29th July.

1.3.pre6 will most likely be the final pre release. Please download it
from 
http://ftp.zresearch.com/pub/gluster/glusterfs/1.3-pre/glusterfs-1.3.pre6.tar.gz


Happy Hacking,
-- 
Anand Babu Periasamy
GPG Key ID: 0x62E15A31
Blog [http://ab.freeshell.org]
The GNU Operating System [http://www.gnu.org]