Roadmap

(Thanks to Todd for motivating the creation of this roadmap.)

Road to 007

GoboLinux 007 will not be a major departure from 006, but rather, a gradual improvement. A GoboLinux 007 system should be equivalent to a GoboLinux 006 system plus updated packages (especially system packages like Scripts, BootScripts and GoboHide). For this reason, 007 should not take very long -- our goal is July 2003. However, the actual release date should not matter much to the GoboLinux users, because the functionality changes will be gradually introduced in the various releases of the system packages between 006 and 007 (which should happen in a steady pace again, as we start another development cycle).

These are the major things we have in mind for 007, so they'll be the first items we will be working on:

• The Resources directory, as seen on the To-do list. This will improve usability of packages a lot, storing environment variables and possibly post-install scripts.
• Fix all known bugs in the Scripts. All known serious bugs were fixed for 006, but the last few releases of the Scripts package up to 006 changed a lot of things, and the cleanup process is still not complete. For this reason, a few bugs are still around.
• Improve the live CD experience. The base set of the 006 live CD and 006 fresh system are near the same; this should change. The live CD should include, for example, XFree86.

These are additional goals for version 007:

• Improve the collection of packages. The package collection for 006 was rushed, and many popular packages ended up being left out. The 007 ISO should have a much better selection, properly discussed in the mailing list to match the needs of the userbase.
• Automate the base system build process. This is the first step of a long term project, actually. Initially, this will serve to avoid duplication of effort between the i386 and i686 ports. The long term goal is to have a flexible build system that can be used in very different enviornments: vanilla i686 builds for the CD, rootless configurations, or even on top of other kernels.
• Add some hardware detection on installation. there are many projects we can draw technology from in order to do this, so, while it does give great benefits, it's not actually a big challenge.
• Improve documentation. A goal is to bundle as much docs as we can. Documentation has progressed slowly, mostly because of the frequent changes of the system. As things tend to stabilize now, the documentation should catch on.

The i386 port

GoboLinux 006 is currently i686-only. Work on a i386 port has already begun. The first step is a port of the 006 base packages, but the end goal is to have ISOs of 007 for i686 and i386. While the set of i386 packages will probably be made available before 007 is out, I'd say that chances for a 006 release for i386 are low.

The long run

(to be written)