[Ns-developers] ns-3.3 Release Milestone Approaching

[craigdo@ee.washington.edu]

Hi all,

This is a reminder that the ns-3.3 release process is happening and a major
milestone is approaching.  We are now in the middle of the late merge period
where new features can be merged into ns-3-dev in preparation for inclusion
in the next release.  Merge week ends this coming Monday, November 10.

On Monday we will enter the maintenance phase of the release.  In
http://www.nsnam.org/wiki/index.php/Roadmap you will find that during the
maintenance phase, "... no new features are to be added, but the maintainers
may check in fixes to bugs.  Maintainers may appeal to the release manager
for adding new self-contained features, but it is release manager's call."
So, the window for adding new features to ns-3.3 is essentially closed since
it will be virtually impossible to get a design review done before Monday.

As of Monday, any changes to ns-3-dev are limited to addressing bugs
reported in the tracker.

The next steps in our release process are listed below (taken from the
ns-3.3 release status page at http://www.nsnam.org/wiki/index.php/Ns-3.3).

November 10 -- Maintenance phase begins;
December 1 -- Maintenance phase ends;
December 1 -- Code freeze phase begins;
December 1 -- ns-3.3-RC1;
December 4 -- ns-3.3-RC2;
December 8 -- ns-3.3-RC3;
December 11 -- ns-3.3-RC4;
December 15 -- ns-3.3 posted;
December 15 -- Code freeze phase ends;
December 15 -- ns-3.4 Open phase begins.

We expect that the next month will be a relatively quiet time for ns-3-dev
(and your friendly neighborhood release manager), especially since we are
currently changing from an end-loaded feature addition process to a
front-loaded one.  The result is a relatively light load of new features to
integrate in ns-3-dev.

Regards,

-- Craig