Difference between revisions of "Ns-3.3"

Revision as of 23:45, 3 November 2008

The Release

This page summarizes the ongoing release planning for the third stable release of ns-3.

ns-3.3 is scheduled for release in December 15, 2008.

The Release Manager

Craig Dowell (craigdo at ee.washington.edu) is the release manager for ns-3.3 and is the contact for any release issues.

The ns-3.3 Release Schedule

ns-3 releases are based on date-driven schedules as opposed to feature-driven schedules. We decide on a release date and then the release manager works backward to define windows during which time certain activites related to the release can happen. This has been done for ns-3.3 and the important milestones are:

1. September 22 -- ns-3.2 posted;
2. September 22 -- ns-3.3 Open phase begins;
3. October 20 -- Recommended cutoff for new feature submission;
4. October 27 -- Deadline for new feature submissions that require design review;
5. November 3 -- Approved new feature ready-for-merge deadline;
6. November 3 -- Late merge period begins (Merge Week Begins);
7. November 10 -- Late merge period ends;
8. November 10 -- Open phase ends;
9. November 10 -- Maintenance phase begins;
10. December 1 -- Maintenance phase ends;
11. December 1 -- Code freeze phase begins;
12. December 1 -- ns-3.3-RC1;
13. December 4 -- ns-3.3-RC2;
14. December 8 -- ns-3.3-RC3;
15. December 11 -- ns-3.3-RC4;
16. December 15 -- ns-3.3 posted
17. December 15 -- Code freeze phase ends;
18. December 15 -- ns-3.4 Open phase begins.

As described in the Roadmap there are three broad sections in the release schedule. During the open phase, people wanting to include a new feature in ns-3.3 should contact craigdo and arrange to have their features merged into ns-3-dev. You will be expected to provide the following:

• A mercurial patch or bundle against the current version of ns-3-dev that contains your proposed feature addition. You need to make sure that I can apply this patch and build and run (debug and optimized as appropriate) all unit and regression tests sucessfully on all of our target machines;
• A summary of the additions you are proposing and an explanation of any changes to existing code that had to be done in order to support your feature (this will be used to genenerate release notes and will be provided to maintainers if a code review is indicated);
• Some kind of unit or regression test that I can use to determine if your feature is actually working at each stage of the integration.

I will take a quick look at your proposed addition and determine if a code review is required. According to the book of instructions a code review requiring positive acknowledgement by maintainers is indicated if:

• Your proposed feature does not work with all models or on all platforms;
• Your feature changes pre-existing APIs;
• Your feature crosses maintainer boundaries.

Just to be safe, I will probably run a feature submission by at least one maintainer according to the general area of applicability of the feature. For example, if you submit an entirely new device driver model, as a courtesy I will run this submission by the maintainers of the current devices. The maintainers won't have any responsibility to positively ack the submission, but I will take some time to allow a reasonable review.

I will coordinate new feature merges beginning at the start of the open phase (September 22, 2008). The absolute final deadline for feature inclusion in ns-3.3 is the start of the "Late merge period." This is the time during which I merge the code from all of those people who have waited until the last minute and work out any system integration issues that pop up. If you miss the start of the late merge period, or have a feature that is not design-reviewed by the start of the late merge period, well, sorry. You get to wait until the ns-3.4 open period to try again.

The end of the late merge period coincides with the beginning of the maintenance phase. No new features may be added, but the maintainers may check in fixes to bugs; and people with new features that have been accepted and merged may fix bugs in existing features. Please don't try to sneak in more new features or you may have your whole feature set removed at the release manager's discretion. You can ask me if you want to add small, self-contained features, but there are no guarantees that I will okay them.

On December 1st, we are going to enter the code freeze phase. This indicates that we are in the final stages of the release and our primary goal is stability. During the code freeze phase, only P1 bugfixes will be allowed to be checked in. I will begin my daily annoying emails listing all of the priority one bugs that are outstanding. Our goal will be to reduce the number of P1 bugs to zero before the release of ns-3.3.

I reserve the right to veto (and remove) any new feature addition if it begins to cause problems and looks like it threatens the stability of the release at any time in the release process.

Candidates for Merge into ns-3.3

As you can see in the Roadmap, we have identified several candidates for inclusion in ns-3.3. As time passes, I will add more status regarding the progress of these new features.

• Build System Refactoring
• IPv4/Routing Refactoring + Basic IPv6 Support
• IPv6 Address Support
• Emulation Mode Support
• Random Number Generator and RandomVariable Changes
• ICMP Support

Build System Refactoring

Status as of November 3, 2008

Not going to be included in ns-3.3

IPv4/routing refactoring + Basic IPv6 Support

Status as of November 3, 2008

This proved to be too big a chunk to get completed in the short time we had. This has been withdrawn and is currently targeted for merge immediately after the release of ns-3.3 (for ns-3.4). Tom has suggested we breakout the Ipv6Address classes from the original ns-3-ipv6-1st submission to get that in.

IPv6 Address Support

Status as of November 3, 2008

Broken out from merged IPv4/Ipv6 refactoring.

Emulation Mode Support

Status as of November 3, 2008

Design review in progress. Expected merge by end of the week.

Random Number Generator and RandomVariable Changes

Status as of November 1, 2008

The patch for this work currently doesn't compile. Raj has posted a repo with the non-functional code.

ICMP Support

Status as of October 29, 2008

ICMP Support merged into ns-3-dev.

Craigdo 23:45, 3 November 2008 (UTC)