[Opensim-dev] OpenSimulator 0.6 Roadmap

[Justin Clark-Casey]

Justin Clark-Casey wrote:
> Sean Dague wrote:
>> Michael Wright wrote:
>>> As 0.5.9 has just been tagged/released. I think it is a good time to 
>>> start thinking in more details about what the goals for the 0.6 
>>> series should be.
>>> There is a page on the wiki with some ideas, but by having this 
>>> discussion here, hopefully we will get more input/debate. And some 
>>> specifications might get wrote for some of the issues.
>>>
>>> Some of the areas that have been talked about/suggested are:

Oops sorry - didn't properly read that these are just suggestions.  I 
blame the fact that I'm tired and have a cold (as well as having too 
much e-mail to read and too many opinions ;-)

Actually, I think we already had a roadmap for 0.6 (which Charles had 
been following)?  Perhaps these suggestions are better for 0.7 and beyond.

>>>
>>>  - New Xml Serialization format      
>>> http://opensimulator.org/wiki/OpenSim:Xml_Serialization has some 
>>> ideas for a new format.
>>>
>>>     There is also lot of confusion with the current two xml formats 
>>> for prim serialisation. With no-one actually sure what version to 
>>> use. With there actually being very little difference between them. 
>>> So getting a new format would also help to clear up a user support 
>>> issue.
>>
>> +1 on this.  It would be great to actually have some sort of schema here
>> for our xml formats.  I get asked about this *a lot*.
> 
> Yeah this will be an important thing.  I think that there are two 
> aspects to this, a format for internal serialization and a format for 
> external serialization.  Up until now we use what is effectively the 
> same format albeit with some translation (internally we use xml, but 
> externally there was a move towards xml2).  It's possible that these 
> formats should vary.
> 
> In both cases, we probably need some kind of migration code.  I'm 
> imagining something very similar to what we have for sql, except using 
> xslt to do the transformations.
> 
> However, I personally think we could do 0.6 without this (maybe 
> targeting it for 0.7 or something).
> 
>>
>>> - New Scripting Language / API
>>>
>>>  There has been a lot of talk lately of a new Scripting language or 
>>> at least a generic API that scripting languages can hook onto.
>>>
>>> - Inter region communcations rewrite
>>>
>>>  Well what can we say about the current inter regions comms code, 
>>> except it makes the rest of the code in opensim look like perfect 
>>> examples of writing easy to read code.
>>
>> Heh.  Agreed. :)  I suspect that this will fit into the REST bit below.
>>
>>>  - Asset cache/handling
>>>
>>>  There has also been a lot of talk on this list in the past, about 
>>> how to improve the asset handling/caching. And to make it more flexible.
>>>
>>> - Restructure and normalise code
>>
>> Agreed.  I've got some concrete bits here I'd like to take on in the
>> next couple of weeks.
>>
>>> - Clean up the dababase layers
>>>
>>>  I believe sdague is currently working on this. 
>>
>> I'm plugging away, though I think how I move forward there is going to
>> change a little.  Email coming on that shortly.
>>
>>> - Inter-grid protocol
>>>
>>> There is some work being done on support for the Linden labs(tm) 
>>> opengrid protocol. But it would also be nice if we had our own 
>>> protocol that took advantage of all the features of opensim and was 
>>> under our control. 
>>
>> 100% agreed.
>>
>> The last bit that I'd add in here is the REST network interfaces for
>> OpenSim.  I know Dirk has done a lot of that already, but getting us to
>> a set of consistent interfaces would be great here.  I suspect we could
>> be reusing those same interfaces for internal data passing as well as
>> external integration.
> 
> *Please* could you press IBM people for documentation on this?  It's 
> really not so useful to the rest of us if we have to read the code to 
> figure out what it does.
> 
> For my part, I would like to propose a goal of properly cleaning up 
> region module modularization for 0.6.  At the moment, everything gets 
> chucked into OpenSim.ini (which is getting very long and confusing) and 
> controlling what modules are loaded is done in an ad hoc style.
> 
> Ideally, I would hope that we get to a point where module settings are 
> in each module's own ini file and there's some standard framework way to 
> control whether or not they are loaded.
> 
> I'm also going to be a little controversial and say that this is a nice 
> wishlist, but if the past is anything to go by the majority of these 
> things will not get done in the 0.6 timeframe.  Hopefully we're not 
> going to try and set this in stone :-)
> 


-- 
justincc
Justin Clark-Casey
http://justincc.wordpress.com