XS Roadmap

  This page is monitored by the OLPC team.

Release goals

The next release is 0.3

v1.0

• features from 0.9
• bufixes
• upgrade path from any earlier 0.x release

v0.9

Wishlist for the 0.x series.

• XS_Manageability - solid, secure and flexible remote management for XS, inspired in ISConf and PlanetLab
• XS_HTTP_Proxy a strong double-proxy setup inspired on CoDeeN
• XS_Backup solid, flexible scheme to backup and restore the XS itself
• XS_AdminUI simple admin UI to support some key usage scenarios
• Port to Fedora 9
• Webapps
  • XS_Mediawiki - with customised UI, options to load/update prepackaged Wikipedia content, local content, SSO
• XS_Library - Content repository infrastructure

v0.4

• XS_Moodle - with customised UI, options to load prepackaged course content, SSO

v0.3

Matches XO's "8.1.x" releases. Will be deployed in Peru - our first large-scale install of XSs, many of them with nil or spotty connectivity, so strong focus on manageability.

• DS-Backup as per XS_Blueprints:Datastore_Simple_Backup_and_Restore
• Root password management as per XS_Blueprints:OTP_root_passwords

• Manageability

Release schedule

The XS should see a new feature release every ~4 weeks until we hit v1.0. At that point we will encourage installations to switch to v1.0 and ensure the upgrades from earlier releases to 1.0 work smoothly. From 1.0 onwards the release cycle will be slower - probably about 4 months.

In calendar terms, we are very loosely talking about

Versioning Scheme

Releases will follow a <major>.<feature>.<minor> versioning scheme, as follows:

• 2.0 is our long-term "Next Gen" release somewhere in the distance
• 1.0 is our mid-term "we are proud of it - features and stability" release
• 0.3 will be the first release managed by Martin Langhoff, to sync with Peru's April 2008 deployment
• 0.2 is Build 163/164 by Wad.

If for example 0.2 needs bugfixes, we'll see a 0.2.1 release. The 0.9 to 1.0 transition will be about stability and polish.

Exactly what happens between 0.2 and 1.0 will be defined via release goals and blueprints (similar to Ubuntu's approach) which will be managed in dev.laptop.org .

Note: On dev.laptop.org our release names are prefixed with "xs-" so 1.0 is xs-1.0.

Upgradeability Considerations

A key consideration is that once XS is widely installed, countries/regions will want to limit the number of upgrades they apply to the XS. During the 1.x cycle, we must support environments where the XS has a yearly upgrade. That means that with a 4-month cycle 1.0 must be able to upgrade to 1.4 smoothly.

Deployment managers need to be aware that XS with versions earlier than 1.0 can be managed in two ways:

• Once 1.0 is ready, there will be a special upgrade procedure to get from 0.x to 1.0 with minimal steps.
• Upgrading through each version.

Installations using 1.x will be expected to upgrade at least yearly.

Key metrics

When judging release goals, there are some key metrics we must consider (and are not always obvious):

• A common scenario will be an unattended, unmanaged XS that only gets powered up and forgotten. Might have Internet/WAN access, but probably not. Are we improving/regressing the XS performance for that scenario?
• How about the minimal configuration scenarios?

Note: Old releases go to the XS_Changelog