Git, Network Protocol Versioning, and The Current State of the Code

BUSYBUSYBUSY

A lot has been going on with opensim! This is why it's been a very long time since I have posted concerning any of my git adventures; between opensim software development dynamics and the new business concern, I've been just about buried with higher priority things than blogging.

That said, time to play a bit of catch up:

First,  concerning my Git Tip of the Day

It isn't dead. I just had to do some agressive study and cognition on the topic, and then got very busy with the aforementioned other things. The short take: my efforts with respect to grokking git better have been very fruitful, but like just about everything else, I still dont know it all. Expect a post over the next few days with a great deal of detail compiled from my abundant notes.

Now, concerning network protocol versioning, and the recent osgrid bump in protocol version:

Late last week, thursday or friday depending on where you are in the world, osgrid updated their grid backend services and plazas to a ROBUST service paradigm (a project-local acronym, dont go pester google about it). As there are technically significant differences in the backend protocols implemented by the new server(s), an additional change was to increment the network protocol version number, forcing a cut-off of regions operating prior versions of the software. This has serious implications for region operators: they are forced to update to a version of the software from which they cannot roll back. If things go wrong, it's a rough ride until the kinks get ironed out. The bad news is, things went wrong this time. What went wrong? several things. A few fairly significant, a good many minor - no one thing contributed to the problems we've seen since the update. The good news is, a lot , and I mean a lot of good is to come of it. We're seeing memory footprints cut in half, really quick, really reliable on-the fly texture decoding (spells the end of blurry textures once and for all), and greatly increased capacity to endure loads in the release candidates - but issues remain and addressing them is an incremental, iterative process.

Which brings us to The Current State of the Code

There is a release on the website at OSGrid.org. It may, in fact, be a different revision from what is recommended. This state of affairs is no accident or oversight - it's a consequence of the dedication of the developement and testing teams to keeping the best possible code available at any given time. Many incremental improvements and hotfixes have been applied in the last 72 hours or so - if you need to download the binaries, you can have faith that what is there is the best code currently available.

You can expect that releases will be coming fast and furious in the days ahead. Work continues in the interest of producing some very dramatic improvements in opensim, in the broadest of senses. Refactoring projects that have been long under way are nearing completion, code has been cleaned up, new architectures implemented, and many optimizations of memory and other resource use are focused at delivering these benefits in the short term - so please bear with us as we labor to produce what will be nothing less than the most game-changing release of opensim we have ever produced.

And with that, I'll quit bending your ear, and get back to doing something productive.

Cheers!
James/Hiro