DirectFB Roadmap

= DirectFB Roadmap =

We decided that it is best to adopt a time-based release schedule, like many projects already did. (GNOME, Ubuntu, etc). The last three major releases will receive critical fixes, but we will try to keep the changes minimal. That way, users of DirectFB building a product can update to minor releases without the fear of breaking things or making custom changes hard to port to a new minor release. We will also start to release -pre releases for testing, which will be open for major core and API changes. We also plan to integrate more packages (e.g. SaWMan) into the main DirectFB tree, to make sure that each major release comes with a SaWMan that is feature-frozen and fits best. All these measures are meant to make DirectFB releases feel more finished and easier to adopt.

So what will happen next?


 * The 1.4.x branch will get frozen after the 1.4.15 release but will still receive bug fixes
 * The next release of the 1.5.x branch will be 1.6-pre1
 * The release of 1.6.0 is planned for end of January 2012
 * 1.7.0-pre will be opened with the 1.6.0 release
 * During the freezing phase of 1.6.0 any development would need to take place in a branch and merged into trunk when 1.7.0-pre is opened.

Topics for 1.6

 * New Core Architecture - More security, process isolation, privileges, policies, quotas... linux-fusion will be gone in 1.7!
 * Public Interface - New interfaces for applications and frameworks

The initial steps of the IPC changes might become part of 1.5 already, to make it impossible for a slave application to crash the master.

Topics for 1.5

 * Public Interface - Extensions and API changes

Topics for 1.4

 * feature freeze, but add missing implementations of existing features
 * bug fixes, optimizations
 * updates to certain modules