[Ns-developers] ns-3.4 release plans

[Raj Bhattacharjea]

I wanted to follow up on the status of the ns-3.4 release.  I have
included the original email below, and am going to comment inline
about the status of the items we proposed for ns-3.4 back in January.

On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 5:34 PM, Raj Bhattacharjea <raj.b at gatech.edu> wrote:
> I wish a happy new year to the ns-3 development community!  With the new
> year comes new plans, namely those for releasing the next version of ns3,
> version 3.4 .  This email is lengthy, so you can catch the short version on
> the wiki:
>
> http://www.nsnam.org/wiki/index.php/Ns-3.4
>
> Otherwise, read on.
>
> ==Release Schedule==
> The plan is to have an early merge period through January 27th, during which
> proposals for new APIs and features will be reviewed and merged into the
> ns-3-dev trunk.  Any remaining features which have been proposed but not
> fully reviewed, or for which there is no consensus, can be merged in up
> until February 10th.

We ended up holding for some issues I had with the random variables
changes.  In reality, we ended up merging the last new feature for
ns-3.4 on February 24, two weeks behind schedule.

>
> The rest of the month of February will be for maintainance; during this
> period only P1 bugs will be fixed, and no API will change.  Behavioral
> changes to models not affecting API will be allowed.

Looking at the work queue for bugs, it is looking like we will have to
slip the schedule by about two weeks to accommodate bug fixes.  I am
suggesting that we target the end of the maintenance phase (for bug
fixes) to March 18.

>
> From March 1st, release candidates will be released.  The bug count should
> ideally be zero during this time, and any remaining bugs discovered will be
> ironed out by the the 18th of March, when the final release of ns3.4 is
> made.

I suggest we push this back to March 19.  We have adopted a policy of
consider P1 bugs as those which are broken behavior, and will be true
blockers which will hold up the _release candidates_;  that is, there
will be no P1 bugs in ns-3.4-RC1 (otherwise, how is it a candidate for
release?).  Any bugs found from beating on RC1 will be fixed and
posted as RC2, etc.

>
> More details follow here:
> http://www.nsnam.org/wiki/index.php/Ns-3.4#The_ns-3.4_Release_Schedule
>

This link has been updated to reflect the schedule I propose above.

> ==New Features==
>
> The planned new features for 3.4 are as follows:
>
> A new tap net device which will allow ns-3 to create a Linux system network
> interface through which ns-3 traffic can flow back and forth with the real
> world.  It is being adapted by Craig from a prototype version Mathieu has
> been utilizing in demonstrations of ns3.

This work has been merged.

> A system for assigning names to nodes.  Issues of accessing nodes by name,
> utilizing names for accessing trace hooks, displaying the names in trace
> output, and showing the names in logging output are still being resolved.
> Craig is working on this.

This work has also been merged.

> An upgrade to the waf version used in ns-3, as well as a move to a so called
> "allinone" build system.  The system will separate the downloading of
> "optional" components (such as pybindgen and nsc) from the regular waf build
> process of ns-3.  Gustavo has something in the works.

The allinone branch works as promised.

> New API for RandomVariables, adding new seeing API and new default seeding
> behavior.  Raj is working with Michelle Weigle and Hadi Arbabi on this.

This branch has been merged.

> A refactoring of the IPv4 routing API.  Tom is working on this.
> More support for IPv6
> (http://mailman.isi.edu/pipermail/ns-developers/2008-July/004358.html).  Tom
> is working on this.

These two items have been deferred to ns-3.5.

> Behavioral changes in TCP to be RFC compliant in regards to closedown
> behavior (correct FINs and RSTs).  Raj is working on this.
> Consistency of trace hooks across NetDevice types. and true PCAP
> compatibility (http://www.nsnam.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=443).  Craig is
> working on this.
> Possible addition of some rigorous ns3 system tests which work without
> comparing script output against known traces.

The above qualify as bug fixes that are being resolved.  Please see
bugzilla or the bug list for more information:

http://www.nsnam.org/wiki/index.php/Ns-3.4#The_ns-3.4_Bug_List


-- 
Raj Bhattacharjea
Georgia Institute of Technology
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Ph.D. Candidate
Systems Analyst
404.894.2955