[Opensim-dev] OpenSimulator 0.6 Roadmap

[Dr Scofield]

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:
>>>
>>>  - 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.

i'll try to get the various participants to write stuff up on the wiki.
> 
> 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.

as long as it's ini files (or we can deal with both ini and xml), +10 from me.


-- 
dr dirk husemann ---- virtual worlds research ---- ibm zurich research lab
SL: dr scofield ---- drscofield at xyzzyxyzzy.net ---- http://xyzzyxyzzy.net/
RL: hud at zurich.ibm.com - +41 44 724 8573 - http://www.zurich.ibm.com/~hud/