Wow! It's great to finally get to talk about the OpenSolaris 2008.11 release and the tremendous accomplishment that it represents. I've been watching the OpenSolaris Install Development team (my team!) working on this for months--starting before the dust had even settled from the 2008.05 release--and they've just done a wonderful job.
What's cool about this release? Well, there's a whole bunch, from Time Slider to the great accessibility features to vastly improved hardware support, but I'd like to focus on the Install developments, simply because that's closest to my experience (and my team's incredible effort). What did they do for this release?
Well, first, there's the AI (Automated Install) project, which delivered a great prototype of the hands-free install features that we plan to be supporting in the next release. It's a huge step and a vast amount of work, complicated by some staffing changes mid-stream. The team pulled together and really made huge progress. I do expect that there will be some rather substantial changes for the next release, because I keep talking to engineers who have an ever-growing list of "well, if I can, I want to fix" tasks for the next few months. That said, even in the current form, AI is a super achievement and a great foundation for our planned SPARC support and other enhancements. This project took the lion's share of the engineering effort from the Install team over the last several months, and it shows the commitment.
Next, there's DC (Distribution Constructor), which underwent a complete rewrite from the prototype code we delivered in May to final, supportable, and polished code for this release. Watching the engineers on this project was fun, because they just kept pushing harder and harder to get the code done, and done early enough to allow some stabilization time before the rest of the code from all of the other parts of OpenSolaris hit. Obviously, as we're creating our own release engineering tools--and your tools, as a member of the community--it's a big task, and one that's very intolerant of mistakes. It's clear from how quickly the post-2008.11 improvements are being completed that this code is a significant milestone, and a great place for anyone wanting their own OpenSolaris-based distro to start.
ICT (Install Completion Tasks) is the un-sung hero here--the engineers who drove this simply saw some loose ends from the last release that needed attention, and they dove in and got it done. It wasn't sexy or exciting, but it really needed to be done, and the effort here shows in the overall fit-and-finish of the 2008.11 Install technologies. Thanks, guys!
Snap Upgrade, finally, is my biggest "wow!" from this release, I think. (That changes, based on what I've looked at last, but for now, it's the one.) I just find it incredible that I can install a system with the 2008.05 release, and do a full upgrade, while the system is running, in only a few minutes, and easily--safely--choose to move forward, or stick with the old bits. After ~15 years with various Unix and Linux flavors, and the trepidation that system upgrades always bring with them, it's mind-boggling that upgrades now take virtually no time, accrue virtually no risk, and just work. From the engineering management standpoint, the most impressive part is that the engineers working on this project made it look utterly simple. No sweat, no drama, no hassle--just hg commit after commit after commit, and results in spades.
My comments here cannot be complete without acknowledging the rest of the folks who helped make these accomplishments possible. OpenSolaris Install benefited from having really good support from the QE, Tech Pubs, and HCI teams, and many other groups across the organization. Some of the team members really pitched in behind the scenes, in non-obvious ways, to make it possible for these teams to succeed. And the teamwork within the organization to ensure success just delighted me.
Honestly, I cannot imagine being any prouder of a team than I am of this one--working with these very talented, hard-working, and diligent engineers is utterly delightful.
Thanks so much, to all of you--you've done a great job, and you're already delivering for the next release. Wow.