My proposed path to a Beta for Samba 4.0

[Andrew Bartlett]

As I have mentioned before, we are very close to making a beta release
of Samba 4.0.

We haven't done betas of Samba for quite some time (the 3.x series
hasn't used alpha or beta releases since 3.0), so I should be clear what
I mean by a beta, as I seek concurrence or comment. 

My proposal is that the release of Samba 4.0 beta 1 will be much like
the alpha and TP series before it, but the transition marks the maturity
of the long-awaited integration of the smbd file server, currently being
developed under the s3fs project. 

Before we can make a beta 1 release, we need to merge the patches I
proposed and make the use of s3fs the default mode of operation for a
new provision.  To avoid disruption to existing production users, I
propose that this be done by writing entries in the smb.conf at
provision time, rather than changing the defaults inside Samba.

Once these two steps are made, I think we should make a release.  I do
not propose to wait on any other features/patches/bugs, but to instead
focus on making a beta2 as soon any any other significant changes are
ready.

Finally, once we are happy with the state of the master tree, we can
proceed to Karolin managing pre or release candidate releases, and at
the RC stage we should fork the tree for the final release.

I would appreciate any comments that any of you have about this plan,
because I like many of you are exited to be getting to Samba 4.0, and
want to ensure we do it in the best way we can.

Thanks,

Andrew Bartlett
-- 
Andrew Bartlett                                http://samba.org/~abartlet/
Authentication Developer, Samba Team           http://samba.org