Domino administrators are spoiled. A new version comes out, we upgrade and it works. Its gotten so you barely have to test even a major revision. Backward compatibility is part of the QA process.

The rest of the world is not that friendly to upgrades.

A few months back I put a new linux based test server together. Its been sitting and waiting for me to start testing ever since. You may recall that I named my new server "AllSpark" after the device of the same name from the Transformers movie. Its a 64bit Dual Processor AMD based machine. Its purpose is to test the next generation of software for Second Signal. That means a new version of Domino, a major revision change on Asterisk -- everything. I picked this particular platform because that's offered at just the right price point for a configuration I may switch to at Serverbeach. I need to see that the whole thing will run reliably on that platform.

I'm way behind on my Asterisk upgrades. I've been using 1.2.x and the new version is 1.4.14. I'm really impressed with it. Aside from dealing with the various changes I'll need to make as I upgrade (deprecated functionality replaced with "the new, better way") and so on, I also have re-code and apply my customized additions and recompile. All that means lots of testing.

Right off the bat, the Asterisk software is really maturing in terms of fit and finish. The compile process now includes a menuconfig option in the Makefile, and the install process is smoother. They've included a startup script now called safe_asterisk that takes care of setting the system up properly and handles a crash with a restart after a very brief pause and cleanup. The script will even notify you by email that it happened. init tab scripts for many versions of linux are also included now, so starting and stopping the drivers and the server itself is much more native.

All in all, bravo to the Asterisk developers.