Followup to svn list postings about new asterisk additions

Followup posted to users list about previous two postings... :)

Friends in the Asterisk community,

Yesterday the Asterisk development branch, also known as "svn trunk",
changed quite a lot. We added
two major features: A new version of AEL and a new configuration
system. Hang on, and I'll explain!

AEL - The Asterisk Extension Language
Last summer, Mark Spencer created a new language for creating your
Asterisk dial plan. Before that, many developers tried making the current dial plan "language" into a
script language by adding if/then/else and do/while constructs - and it all seemed very strange
and, well, not really like a script language.

So Mark decided to take another route and implemented a new language,
that was interpreted into the old. You could suddenly create a dial plan in a language
that looked more like C, and let the AEL parser create a dial plan based on the old language.
This first version was experimental and had a lot of problems. Writing a language parser is
not an easy task.

Remember that what you write in the AEL file and what you see when
you do "show dialplan" in the CLI is very different. AEL is still interpreted into the old
dial plan language.

The new AEL is implemented using Bison, which leads to a much more
robust parser. Steve Murphy has put a lot of work into implementing AEL2 and it
looks very good. So good, so Kevin removed the "experimental" flag on AEL, making it a standard
feature in Asterisk.

AUTOCONF and MENUSELECT - Installation now is easier!
Since I joined the Asterisk community, I have seen regular requests
for a "./configure" script for Asterisk. The Asterisk Makefile replaced some of the
functionality of the "./configure" script, trying to find out what functionality was
available on the host system.

Yesterday, we finally got an auto-configuration system. The Makefile
now creates a configure script, runs it to check what you have - MySQL, OSP,
PostgreSQL, CURL etc - and make sure the optimal Asterisk is created on your system.
Additionally, you can run "make menuselect" to be able to select what
modules you want. No app_dial.so? Just disable it! Menuselect also marks
clearly modules that can't be installed on your system due to lacking third party
libraries.

And to top it off, we now have ASCII art embedded into Asterisk!

Making life easier for the Asterisk administrator
While these additions does not really change the functionality of
your favourite PBX, they make installation and configuration of your Asterisk system
easier. It's a big step forward and an important part of Asterisk 1.4.

Now, I have to learn the inner workings of this and adopt my branches
to it... Always good to have something to do ;-)

Greetings from the Asterisk Developer Community!

/Olle

---
* Olle E. Johansson

SVN Testers Needed Part Two – Complete AEL2 ReWrite merged!

Kevin P Flemming posted this to the list...

Steve Murphy's fabulous complete rewrite of the AEL parser/compiler has
been merged into SVN trunk, replacing the previous implementation. It is
now no longer considered experimental, and you are encouraged to start
testing the use of AEL in your dialplans :)

SVN Testers needed – Menuselect and Autoconf added!

Kevin P has posted this to the list...

To all SVN trunk developers/users:

The autoconf and menuselect branch has been merged into SVN trunk. What
this means to you is that you will most definitely see some differences
in the build process, and you will likely encounter problems we have not
yet seen during the development branch's lifetime. Please let us know
what you find, and we will make every effort to correct it.

See UPGRADE.txt for some basic notes about the changes.

Asterisk Advisory Council Formed

Council to Participate in Managing the Asterisk Open Source Telephony Project

Digium® Inc., the creator of Asterisk® and pioneer of open source telephony, today announced the formation of the Asterisk Advisory Council. The Council was developed to respond to the increased interest and participation in the Asterisk open source telephony project.

Composed of five experienced Asterisk community contributors, the Council will assist in the management of the Asterisk open source telephony project. Responsibilities of the council include the selection and supervision of community developers, management of release cycles, and maintenance of Asterisk contributions, among other duties.

"As the Asterisk market continues to grow rapidly on a daily basis, we saw the need to expand the team managing the open source project," said Kevin Fleming, co-maintainer of Asterisk and senior software engineer at Digium. "By identifying these key community members to participate in our council, we can ensure that the project continues to add innovations and improve without any delays."

The following members have been appointed to the council:

Brian Capouch, Assistant Professor and Chair of the Computer Science Department at Saint Joseph's College: Capouch has integrated Asterisk with a number of other processors including home automation, network monitoring, camera-based security, and the openWRT distribution of Linux. He teaches a college course on VoIP, has presented at a number of industry conferences, and is working on a forthcoming book on Asterisk to be published by Addison-Wesley.

Olle E. Johansson, Asterisk Developer, consultant and Evangelist, founder of Edvina AB, Sweden: Johansson has contributed to the SIP channel among other parts of Asterisk, worked as a bug marshal and has written documentation on the software and the Asterisk wiki. He is also one of the founders of Astricon - the Asterisk conference, and regularly performs Asterisk training sessions.

Tilghman Lesher, Developer for VCCH, Inc., a leading provider of innovative solutions based on open source software: Lesher has contributed a large amount of code to the core of Asterisk and is the author of a number of applications and dialplan functions. He has been programming for over twenty years, with eight years of professional experience.

Jeremy McNamara, Founder of The NuFone Network, the first Asterisk-based Inter-Asterisk eXchange (IAX) provider: McNamara has been working in all aspects of the telecommunications industry for more than nine years and has extensive experience with the development, testing and deployment of Asterisk-based solutions.

John Todd, Tello Corporation: Todd comes from an IP networking background, having worked in several large ISPs, ITSPs, and application service providers. He is currently developing next-generation network elements and systems, some of which involve integrating Asterisk with proprietary systems for customers and providers. John is also an active participant and speaker at various VoIP forums and conferences.

Details of the Council's organization, membership, management policies, decisions and current projects will be available on the Asterisk website.

back in boring canada :p

okay so, i'm back, and i'm bored. I miss the crazyness of india and all the people and horns, my god the horns, but yeah, i really want to go back for pleasure and for business. I see vast potential there, and most of it untapped. The next 10 years should prove to be quite interesting I think.

Anyway, i took like 1200 photos, but i'll only subject you to about 400 or so of the good ones. Check them out:

HERE ARE THE PHOTOS