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Asterisk 1.8.0 released
Version 1.8.0 of the
Asterisk telephony system has been
released; this is a major,
long-term-supported release. New features include secure RTP support, IPv6
SIP support, calendaring integration, a new call logging system, and more;
see the
change summary for more information than you will ever possibly be able
to use. (Thanks to Graham Cantin).
(Log in to post comments)
Asterisk 1.8.0 released Posted Oct 27, 2010 19:43 UTC (Wed) by job (guest, #670) [Link]
After a dozen betas and release candidates someone decided to mess with the channel logic so it drops calls instead of transferring them with sip clients. Be sure to test extensively before you migrate production systems. (There are changes in dialplan logic as well so read the upgrade text file closely.)
I use Asterisk. I love Asterisk. Posted Oct 27, 2010 20:43 UTC (Wed) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] But... the documentation is horrible. That change log is useless and large chunks of Asterisk functionality are essentially undocumented. Digium, I recommend you look at the outstanding PostgreSQL documentation and perhaps ask the PostgreSQL documentation team for pointers on how to make good, useful docs. Having complete, well-organized docs would make Asterisk far more pleasant to deploy.
I use Asterisk. I love Asterisk. Posted Oct 27, 2010 20:58 UTC (Wed) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]
As for the changelog:
The HTML version of it:
From the source tree:
Information for upgrading between Asterisk versions 1.6.2 and 1.8:
I use Asterisk. I love Asterisk. Posted Oct 28, 2010 0:46 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] Now compare that utterly useless (to end-users) changelog with the PostgreSQL release notes: http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.0/static/release-9-0 Similar info, but attractively arranged with a summary of important changes first followed by end-user-readable detailed info. That's how it should be done.
I use Asterisk. I love Asterisk. Posted Oct 28, 2010 4:43 UTC (Thu) by jberkus (subscriber, #55561) [Link]
dskoll,
Asterisk is an open source project. You could submit some docs, especially if you already know how to use it. I know *I'd* appreciate it if you did.
(And, glad you found the PG release notes helpful. We've been improving them with each release ... they didn't start out that way.)
I use Asterisk. I love Asterisk. Posted Oct 28, 2010 14:07 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] Josh, Asterisk is an open source project. You could submit some docs I could, except I don't have time. I already run or contribute to a handful of open-source projects and adding another one just won't work. I'm sure anyone on the PG team knows that writing good docs is very hard work, so let me restate: I use Asterisk and I love Asterisk. All I'm saying is that they could use better docs.
I use Asterisk. I love Asterisk. Posted Oct 28, 2010 18:26 UTC (Thu) by pebolle (guest, #35204) [Link]
>> Asterisk is an open source project. You could submit some docs
> > I could, except I don't have time. [...]
0) That reply was more polite than needed.
1) Given the focus of LWN and assuming some basic familiarity of its readers with that focus it's safe to guess that:
2) When someone voices some complaint about a free, open source, etc., software project, one can either refute that complaint or not.
3) When one has to admit a complaint is valid, one might, every now and then, add that the project involved is free, open source, whatever software (eg, "Yes, project X is unbearably slow, but at least it's free software. All similar products are proprietary"). In most cases, it's probably better to not do that.
I use Asterisk. I love Asterisk. Posted Oct 29, 2010 0:03 UTC (Fri) by jberkus (subscriber, #55561) [Link]
Pebolle,
I was *also* being polite. As someone who works on an OSS project, I hate to see the immediate -- and only -- comments on a major release being bashing them for having inadequate docs. Were I an Asterisk developer, I would be extremely discouraged by the comments on the release, and wonder why I bother working on open source software.
I doubt that the Asterisk developers are unaware that their documentation needs love. But they, like dskoll, probably don't have enough time to fix it ... as mentioned, writing good documentation takes a LOT of time. I don't really buy the argument "this software is really important to me but I can't be bothered to spend time or money on making it better so I'll criticize it instead." Destructive criticism of something is not a valuable, or even useful, contribution.
The reason that the PostgreSQL project has really good docs is because *lots* of people who wanted better docs decided to pitch in and write them, over a period of years. Some people only contributed one page. The release notes are good because 5 people (including me) worked on them. And even so, we could use more help; particularly our beginner docs need work. Our docs did not improve as a result of criticism.
Normally I would have ignored this anyway, but since it was my work to which Asterisk was being unfavorably compared, I felt I had to speak up, partly to let the Asterisk developers know that it wasn't the authors of the PostgreSQL docs bashing them.
I use Asterisk. I love Asterisk. Posted Oct 29, 2010 7:59 UTC (Fri) by pebolle (guest, #35204) [Link]
> Normally I would have ignored this anyway, but since it was my work to which Asterisk was being unfavorably compared, I felt I had to speak up [...]
It should be clear I'm rather annoyed with the way people seem to use "hey, you can fix it yourself" as a proper reply to almost any criticism. But it's probably this line in the original comment that triggered all this:
(There's a similar remark a few comments later.)
That comes close to, well, demanding a project to do something (behaviour that's common on mailing lists, in comments on bug trackers, etc.). And a proper response to people making demands can very well be to tell them to do the things they demand themselves.
This means I actually choose the wrong thread to show my annoyance (which forced you to write the above, long comment).
I use Asterisk. I love Asterisk. Posted Oct 31, 2010 0:03 UTC (Sun) by jberkus (subscriber, #55561) [Link]
pebolle,
Understood.
And hey, if the Asterisk developers did want advice on doc development, they are welcome to ask us. Not that I'm sure that we have a lot of good advice, other than "don't commit any new feature without docs." For the rest, we have good docs mostly because of a lot of contributor effort *in spite of* poor infrastructure and processes.
I use Asterisk. I love Asterisk. Posted Nov 17, 2010 4:44 UTC (Wed) by Baylink (subscriber, #755) [Link]
> That comes close to, well, demanding a project to do something (behaviour that's common on mailing lists, in comments on bug trackers, etc.). And a proper response to people making demands can very well be to tell them to do the things they demand themselves.
Which is a much less palatable response when the primary development team are all employed by a commercial organization who make a living off the project in question. If you're the hub for a commercial FOSS program product, then (IMHO) you do in fact bear some obligation to over developers and users who are, in effect, helping you make a living.
I use Asterisk. I love Asterisk. Posted Nov 17, 2010 4:41 UTC (Wed) by Baylink (subscriber, #755) [Link]
> I doubt that the Asterisk developers are unaware that their documentation needs love.
It's not at all necessary that that be the case; they could, indeed, not know...
I use Asterisk. I love Asterisk. Posted Oct 28, 2010 14:08 UTC (Thu) by mamikk (subscriber, #43121) [Link]
You have a decent changelog here:
Asterisk 1.8.0 released Posted Oct 28, 2010 4:49 UTC (Thu) by jberkus (subscriber, #55561) [Link]
Congratulations to the Asterisk team on the new release. Today entire businesses exist only because of Asterisk (including a couple of my clients), and the project changed the PBX industry to today's VOIP.
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