Announce: Asterisk versions after the 1.2 release

Note: Ollie has posted some clarifications about the different versions of Asterisk released.

Friends in the Asterisk community,

There have been a lot of questions about Asterisk version numbers on the mailing lists. Here's a clarification:

* Executive summary
-------------------
- Asterisk 1.2 = RELEASE version (previously called "stable")
Asterisk 1.2.0 = First release of 1.2 (released now)
Asterisk 1.2.1 = Second release of 1.2 (not out yet)
- Asterisk 1.0 = old version, not maintained any more
Asterisk 1.0.9 = Final release of Asterisk 1.0
- Asterisk 1.3 = DEVELOPMENT code base, dangerous territory



* Asterisk 1.2 is the RELEASE version
-------------------------------------
This version is maintained in the v1-2 CVS branch. The released code, that you want to use in production servers, is released as tar.gz archives on ftp.digium.com and mirrors. These reflect the tagged CVS code, the first tag in the 1.2 tree being v1-2-0. The next release will be version 1.2.1, consisting of updated code including bug fixes that has been done since the 1.2 release date. From the minute of the
release, we've had a lot of interest in testing the new version and a constant flow of bug reports.

You do not want to follow the v1-2 CVS tree in production, since it is changing quite a lot and not all changes are tested and stabilized. After testing, we product tar.gz archives that you want to use. Make sure you subscribe to the asterisk-announce mailing list to get updates if you do not follow the massive flow of messages in asterisk-users.

For the 1.2 tree functionality is frozen. No new functionality is added to this code. The rule is that we only apply additional documentation and bug fixes to a release version.

* Asterisk 1.0 is no longer maintained
--------------------------------------
The old release version, 1.0 is no longer maintained, apart from the possibility of serious security bugs that needs to be fixed. This code is over one year old now and we've successfully managed to avoid adding new functionality to it since the release in september 2004. Before filing a bug report for a 1.0 version, make sure you also test the 1.2 version - a lot of things have been fixed in 1.2. If the bug exists in
1.2, go ahead and make a note in the bug report that it doesn't work in either version.


* Asterisk 1.3 is the new development code base
-----------------------------------------------
"CVS head" is the name currently used for the development code base, which now is on version 1.3dev. This is the base for a future 1.4 RELEASE.

During the development process of 1.3, we will move from CVS as a versioning system to "subversion", a new system used by many open source projects. "cvs head" will not be a useful name for 1.3dev for much longer.

WARNING :: Be warned that developers will go crazy with this code after a long period of bug-fixing and release engineering with 1.2. New things will be added quickly, and this version may or may not work at all from time to time. A lot of quite large internal architectures changes will be implemented in 1.3. These will have to be tested and propably cause a lot of very interesting craches, from a coding perspective. From a user perspective, those crashes will not be interesting or fun at all. Avoid the development tree in production use.

I hope this message clarifies the confusion a bit.

Regards,
/Olle