Development / Release Status

Hello,

The release schedule planned a release for today (0.24.0), but given the big 
changes on trunk (CORBA-addon; User type system) it took a while longer to 
stabilise. I feel now confident to branch 0.24.0 and put that one in 'Stage 
3' : Documentation and show-stopper fixes.

I plan the release in 2 weeks, 27/06/2006.  There are lots of issues we still 
need to cope with *after* this release:

1. Deprecation of the Control Kernel + Components
0.24 is the last branch using the Control Kernel. It will be removed in the 
next release. It is mainly there to not hurt existing users which want to 
upgrade. There is an option to maintain a 'compatibility' library, but a 
maintainer will need to step forward. The current Control Kernel Components
need to be 'moved' to the new Component model. This is already in progress.

2. Separation of 'Real-Time Control Services' and 'Kinematics'
The 'geometry' and 'kinematics' packages will merge in one independent library 
and will be removed from trunk. When this library is 'aware' of an Orocos 
installation, it will provide enhanced features. The 'Real-Time Toolkit' will 
be simplified in that all header files are in one place ( rtt/Header.hpp ) 
and only one namespace is used (RTT::).

3. Completing the CORBA port.
Data Flow ports and Events are not usable yet over a network. Given the 
current state of trunk, this is an add-on feature and not a 'refactoring' 
feature.  CORBA is *not* required, it enables an extra feature: accessing 
components over a network.

4. Transformation of the Control Kernel GUI
The GUI needs to be adapted to browse the new Orocos Components (TaskContext).
This is for now a low priority issue, but an intern may help to speed it up.

5. Repaint the website
We are working on this to make Orocos far more accessible (and attractive) for 
visitors by restructuring the content and guide new visitors to the 
least-effort path.

Since the next official release is 1.0, we'll make 'development' releases 
(starting with 0.25.0) with these changes gradually dropping in.

Peter
-- 
Peter Soetens -- FMTC -- <http://www.fmtc.be>