Are we ready for a Samba4 alpha?

[Matthias Dieter Wallnöfer]

Hi Andrew!

It's a bit a difficult topic. Maybe you have seen now: I've
distinguished the expected features now in bugzilla. It's not really
clear to me what you would like to expect from this first alpha. Should
it be interesting only developers and more experienced technical people
or should we address the software to a wider public? If we like the
first approach, I think we are basically there.
When we whould take the second, then in my eyes it is much harder
because some actions in SAMBA are a bit difficult to run (f.e. adding a
DNS zone file to the server, for every domain user there should be
created the according POSIX user ...). I think someone on the mailing
list has begun the work for writing a documentation. This is very
important for the project wich is at this stage nearly undocumented! I
also thought it would be an idea to package the software for various
distributions. I don't really know but I think SAMBA 4 is to much in the
shadow of SAMBA 3, that should be changed with the alpha!
Yes, with the bugs: I think, the most important should be fixed (f.e.
the bug where the whole SMBD crashes). Maybe you would like to prepare a
list with the bugs you expect to fix for the alpha release so I comment
on it.
I had then also some other ideas for the software, but I wait after the
release of the alpha because they are more advanced things and I have to
discuss they with you.

Matthias