>       This is why I have resisted mISDN so much...  I have NO WAY to really
> test it.  Our particular scenario is not a good example (I can at least
> try to load the module), but beyond that I don't even have hardware -
> let alone something to connect it to.

First of all, I did not want to start a huge discussion now. I just wanted
to point out that Astlinux becomes over time much more complex since it
supports more and more tools and applications - what is really fantastic.
But the level of complexity plus the dependancy on updates on all the
packages from the original developers, makes it hard for a small team to
keep the pace with high quality. You are doing a fantastic job, everybody
admires your work and I really like astlinux a lot!

>       I would love to test this more, but at this moment in time I am
> reluctant to test anything related to mISDN because it is literally the
> only part of the system that I can't test.

I fully understand you. But do you really want to test all possible
hardware components yourself? How can you manage this as more and more
hardware you want/will support? Wouldn't it make sense to delegate some of
this work to other people? Sure, you have to trust them and they have to
be capable in doing this job.

> This combined with the clear
> fact that mISDN is inherently more flaky than other parts of the system.

What I don't like about mISDN is how it gets build. It's all done in a
home-grown makefile. If there is a change in the makefile and we want to
upgrade, we have to patch the patches. That's awfull! The overall quality
of the software itself is quite good. Maybe some features are missing, but
it works. And it works reliable.

> Your work with it has been excellent, but it is obvious that
> mISDN/chan_misdn still isn't quite "stable stable".

I agree, that it could be more stable. However, I have a few systems up
and running now in production environment and I have no issues. It just
runs.

> I have done
> hundreds of builds over the months and mISDN breaks more than any other
> single component - no doubt about it.

What can I say...

> I got so sick of it that I flat
> out disabled it in the standard config.

That's ok since not everybody is using it. Nevertheless, it can be added
to the release builds. People probably had/have issues if they don't have
ISDN hardware, asterisk doesn't start because chan_misdn stops the whole
startup process if it doesn't find its subsystem. That's annoying. By
having chan_misdn excluded from loading by default, would make sense.

> Even though only a very small
> percentage of users actually use it, it seems to be the single most
> often complained about "feature".  Now that you have switched to
> snapshots it should be better, but still...

Again, what can I say... If there is a suitable alternative, we may want
to switch. There is bristuff (never tried it, I only read that it probably
has some more features, but again some code patching is necessary. I
personally don't like that.) and there is visdn. I tried visdn, but at the
time I tested it it had too many bugs.

So what now? There are several options... I don't know. It's frustrating,
I know.

>       The builds from the last few days were made solely for people to test
> them.  The announcement was only sent to astlinux-users (not even
> announce) and they have only been provided in a directory on
> mirror.astlinux.org - no mention on any website (except for DAN).  I
> purposefully wanted to limit their distribution to only people on this
> mailing list that were interested in testing them.

Good, unterstood. I only had the feeling that people here join the list,
try the stuff and get unhappy (mostly about misdn as you said) because
they assume that it just runs fine.

It is good that you explained this fact here and I think it was helpful
not only for me.

>       Anyways - it appears that this is (hopefully) a simple linking problem.
>   I'll try to get the module to load when I work on it later tonight.

What acutally caused this linking problem? Something outside mISDN must
have changed since we are using frozen snapshots...

So again, sorry if I made people upset here, especially you. But in my
opinion it gets very difficult to manage this project if there is only a
single person is managing the entire project and if more and more packages
get added.

BTW, I am NOT saying that I should be the one who should maintain the
mISDN stuff. I did this so far because it was fun for me and I could at
least contribute a bit to the project. There are lots of smarter people
out there and everybody should feel free to jump in and contribute!! If
someone wnats to add bristuff or visdn -> do it!

cheers, Ingmar
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