New release?

[Wayne Workman]

What would people think about a release? It’s been over a year since the last one. There are 248 adopters on version 1.5.9.111

I realize it’s not trivial to put a FOG release together. Perhaps all the steps can be captured to make it easier for others in the future to do it?

[george1421]

@wayne-workman Not only FOG, but bzImage and iPXE need to be updated to current for the next release what ever it shall be named. I could be (probably am) wrong but I think 1.5.9 still ships with FOS Kernel 4.19.x and a pretty old version of iPXE. We have needed to have several FOG admins self compile a current version of iPXE to get iPXE to support current hardware too. The point is its a bit bigger than just FOG code that needs to be updated.

I think everything has been solved in 1.5.9.111, right?

[Sebastian Roth]

Thanks @Wayne-Workman for bringing this up in the forums! I wished to push for a new release this Summer already but way too many things keep me busy. Probably the same for @Tom-Elliott I would imagine.

My idea was and still is to release a final 1.5.x version and then finally switch to 1.6.x where Tom has put in a major amount to work overhauling the web UI. The two code bases have been running in parallel for a long time now and we need to make sure (as good a possible) that:

1. code bases are merged properly
2. updating from 1.5.x to 1.6.x works for most people and distros without trouble

Beside the things @george1421 mentioned already there are a few more to consider when pushing out a release. I can come up with a full list and instructions as I find it a great idea to make this part not depend on individuals! Though I would think it’s also key to pass on some details person to person. Who is keen and able to join into releasing the next version as a team?

[Tom Elliott]

@sebastian-roth et al.

Sorry, I’ve not been able much to work on anything in a while. I will try to correct that moving forward though I’m still fairly busy with work and all.

I’m keen, if everybody else is, to look over 1.6 vs 1.5.x and just simply moving over to it. The UI for 1.5 was itself quite an overhaul but shows too little progress now (that we’re at 1.5.9). Moving to 1.5.10 seems cursory at this point, in my opinion.

I can’t say I’ll have a lot of cycles free to keep this moving in a linear fashion though.

The biggest hurdles with 1.5.x and 1.6.x are getting the codebase ready with PHP 8 support it seems too me.

I’m of course able to try to help release a 1.5.10 release if that’s what’s really needed, but I think the 1.6 codebase has been around long enough and in parallel long enough it might be a good position to just check the bases, clean up where necessary, and release 1.6.0.

Let me know what you all think.

[Quazz]

@tom-elliott I haven’t been very active here lately, but I’m willing to help on PHP8 support.

Still setting up an environment at home, but once it’s ready I’ll take a look.

[Tom Elliott]

@quazz I already got it working on the working-1.6 repository. I started working to limit the amount of error messages too, though that’s going to be a project in and of itself.

For dev-branch:

https://github.com/FOGProject/fogproject/blob/dev-branch/packages/web/lib/db/databasemanager.class.php#L47

Change the implode($noDBpattern, "|") to implode("|", $noDBpattern)

That should fix the issue as it seems PHP 8 standardized their usage of implode/explode for ease.

[Sebastian Roth]

@george1421 said in New release?:

I think everything has been solved in 1.5.9.111, right?

No. There is a fair amount of things still open that would be great to get fixed before the release: https://github.com/FOGProject/fogproject/issues plus a few things I track in the forums and on another list, maybe even look into the fog-client/zazzles issues for a next fog-client version to release with it.

On top we shall get the act together and finalize documentation on docs.fogproject.org (and bury the somewhat dated wiki)!

Anyone keen to work together and get this done?

@Tom-Elliott said:

The UI for 1.5 was itself quite an overhaul but shows too little progress now (that we’re at 1.5.9). Moving to 1.5.10 seems cursory at this point, in my opinion.

Not sure I understand what you mean by “cursory”? We have done more than 100 commits (114 as of today) since the release of 1.5.9, fixed many things plus a few dozen more commits in the FOS repo as well and I reckon it worth another 1.5.x release.

I’m keen, if everybody else is, to look over 1.6 vs 1.5.x and just simply moving over to it.

Don’t think we are ready to push everyone to 1.6.x just now - yet the support we’d need to provide in the forums. While a fair amount of people got with the dev version and even dove into the new 1.6.x branch we also have many users asking for some stability in FOG. For those I’d suggest they stick with 1.5.x for now and probably some months down the road until 1.6.x is fully ready for production. Just my opinion.

[george1421]

@sebastian-roth said in New release?:

For those I’d suggest they stick with 1.5.x for now and probably some months down the road until 1.6.x is fully ready for production. Just my opinion.

Same here I think sticking with 1.5.x line a bit longer is in order. No new features in 1.5.x just bug fixes for now. We need to get the 1.5.x last version as stable as 1.4.4 was to the 1.4.x line.

In 1.6 I’d like to see nfsv4, and some other stuff around security posture of FOG nothing dramatic though.

[Sebastian Roth]

Now, time flies and it’s been another two months. I’ve had very little time due to other projects but things are calming down a little bit right now. So I hope we can get this done in the next few weeks. I can take the lead on this but I can’t do it all on my own. I would really need some help by others to do some testing and so on.

So please get involved, contact me or post here.