The Road to NetworkManager 0.7

Let’s start off with an artsy photo¹ and an obscure-but-related caption², becuase that’s the trendy thing to do these days on a blog:

^{Almost home…}

We’ve been working on NetworkManager 0.7 for almost 2 years; it’s been on the rotiesserie’s tasty-slow-cook setting for a long time.  And it’s so close to being done that your Mom is already yelling at you to stop pounding the little kids from across the street and come inside for dinner.  I’ve put up a wiki page with some work items for the NM 0.7 release. This list is by no means complete.  But in the interest of not being a black hole let’s get the stuff out in public and hey, maybe some patches will even show up on networkmanager-list@.  The driving features have been done for a few weeks now, and what’s left are a few UI things, and lots library best-practices stuff like documentation, symbol visibility, API review, and bug fixes.

But what’s not on the list?

• Bluetooth: a bunch of work, but will be a major driver of 0.7.1 or 0.7.5
• IPv6: probably won’t be ready by the time 0.7 ships
• Your broken driver: it’s in the same place as your mom, in a gimp suit in my basement.  Some things just don’t cooperate; you have to keep ’em in the dark and learn ’em with a whip until they stop acting up.

but don’t worry, these will get fixed up over time.

As a bonus, I ported the PPTP VPN plugin to the 0.7 API over the weekend.  You’re welcome. Enjoy.  File bugs.  Await the release of 0.7 breathlessly.

¹ To show you how cool I am because I can take photos

² To show you how cool I am because I can write witty captions