The future of FOG

[glefebvr]

Dear developpers,

I’m currently using FOG from the SVN, updating it from time to time in order to get bug fixes and new features. And I’m very pleased that this project has been reactivated in that way since 1 year and a half.

But now I’m concerned about the future of FOG. I have been checking here and there on the wiki, the forum and the news to check what are the plans of the developper team for the future, but without much success. I’ve seen talking about a new version named “fog-too”, but with no informations about what it is and what the roadmap is ?

So, here are my main questions. Would it be possible to know :

• What is the roadmap for current SVN branch (1.3). Will it be frozen one time ? Is it going to stay a dev branch ? What are the plans ? And do you have any timing for it ?

• Concerning “FOG-too” : what is this version supposed to be ? I saw that it is a complete rewrite of FOG, but in what aim ? Wasn’t FOG 1.00 a complete rewrite too ? What will be its features ? Any roadmap ?

• Would it be possible to do a sticky topic in the forum or a page on the wiki about roadmaps, timelines and the future of FOG ?

Thanks in advance for your answer !

Guillaume

[Tom Elliott]

There is no roadmap readily available. We have had discussions about what we would want to see, and even documented many of the things we discusses which I suppose is close enough for a roadmap for fog-too.

Due to the very nature of FOG and the way it’s developed, it’s not very simple to “Here’s the plans and when we decide to do things.” No it will not be frozen in time, but there is also little to know plans.

FOG-too: is going to be FOG 2.0. Yes it is a complete rewrite. Yes 1.00 was a complete rewrite. The features are not fully defined. We have ideas and we even have some developers working on the coding for it. The intent of 1.0.0 (from my standpoint) was to get FOG Functional from what was in the SVN at the time I started coding on it. While it was a rewrite, it was not my own work and many of the things we see problems with are, in part, due to this. I picked up the code and made things work. I didn’t have any of my own code for it and there’s a lot of “silly” issues that happen. The intent for FOG 2.0 is to make it much more enterprise friendly and customizable. It should also address problems that FOG has with “making assumptions”. When I say making assumptions I mean, for example, The init assuming the HDD is always going to be “/dev/sda” and resizable is always going to have a 100MB first partition for Windows 7. We kind of have a roadmap for FOG 2.0, but again we are a free an opensource project. Having a roadmap is nice, but all of us developers do not work in a central place or office. We do this ALL on our free time.

I know people don’t like to hear that answer all the time (free time), but it’s the truth. We are not sitting centrally together. The development time will, on occasion, chat at different times to discuss ideas, thoughts, and reviews, but it’s not a simple task to get the whole team together. We have members of the development team in Europe, and scattered throughout the United States. There’s not a very simple method to get all developers together at the same time. Yes, for FOG 2.0, we do have guidelines and much better documentation of what is to be expected, but I don’t think we’re anywhere near able to give a full blown Roadmap.

While I’m sure this isn’t the answer you were looking for, I think it’s the best I can give for right now. I can assure you the future of fog (in my eyes) does not look grim.

The idea of the rewrite for FOG 2.0 (aka FOG-too) is supposed to be much less resource intensive, much more secure, use websockets (where possible) vs. polling, and almost entirely modular. By modular, I do not mean OOP/OOB programmed, but rather HIGHLY customizable. It will also have more appropriate access control that could be granularly adjusted.

[madeyem]

A quick question:
Will there be no final 1.30 release? The last time I read about future goals, this seemed to be the next step.

[Tom Elliott]

1.3 will be released, I’m just trying to ensure it’s as stable as possible.

The intent of 1.3 will be our final PHP version of FOG, but will maintain bug fixes and whatnot.

As FOG 2.0 is a complete rewrite (again), it will be a while before it’s ready for primetime. So to help lull the restlessness, We’re trying to ensure 1.3.0 is very rock solid.

[Robx64]

@Tom-Elliott
In new version I would love to see an option like automatically created SUBMENU depending on for example machine brand so every brand will be separated. Why ? Because many of Us using it daily basis to upload images into computers (50-60 a day) and it’s a waste of time if I have to scroll down to the very bottom of the list every time i have a machine to do.
If I can sort it by brand (HP,DELL, ASUS, SAMSUNG etc) it would be … nice
Or maybe it is possible on current version ?

[Robx64]

@Tom-Elliott
Sound awesome …

[Lee Rowlett]

@Robx64 This is already possible with hooks, for example in the hooks folder (webroot/lib/hooks) edit AddHostModel.hook.php and change it from public $active = false; to public $active = true;

albeit that will be the model but you can do the same for brand if needs be. this will add model in list all hosts view and is also searchable and can be sorted etc…and if you used the new search filter in model/brand field for just for example Samsung, it will display just the samsung devices again can even sort the filtered results.

Hope this helps

[Robx64]

@Lee-Rowlett

Ooo wow, good to know, I’ll test it next week then
Can you provide any examples ?
please …

[Lee Rowlett]

@Robx64 what do you mean by examples? enabling the hostmodel hook is an example?

[Asthea]

@Tom-Elliott Will we be able to alpha/beta test FOG 2.0? I’d really be interested.