ANNOUNCE: Drone 2.90.0

[Theodore C. Belding]

I am happy to announce the release of Drone 2.90.0. 

This is a development release; see below for details. Drone 1.03
remains the stable version.

WHAT IS DRONE?

Drone is a system for automatically running simulation programs in
batch mode, either on an arbitrary number of Internet hosts or on a
single computer. It allows sweeps over arbitrary sets of parameters,
as well as multiple runs for each parameter set, with a separate
random seed for each run. It also includes a number of features to
help with simulation record keeping, archiving, statistical
validation, and replication.

WHAT'S NEW

Drone 2.90.0 is a complete redesign and reimplementation of Drone for
Posix platforms; it is not backwards-compatible. It is designed from
the ground up to be more robust, more extendible, more secure, and
more efficient than previous versions. It consists of a client and a
server communicating using a TCP/IP application protocol called the
Drone Protocol (DroneP). DroneP is designed to be implementable on any
platform, although the current implementation is for Posix platforms
only. All of Drone 2.90.0 is written in ANSI/ISO C. It is fully
customizable and scriptable using C, C++, Objective C, Perl, Tcl,
Python, Guile, or any other language that can call C functions.

REQUIREMENTS

Drone 2.90.0 has only been tested on Red Hat Linux 6.x, but it should
be easily portable to any other Posix system. (This allegedly includes
Windows NT/2000 and MacOS X.)  For quickstart instructions on
installing the complete Drone system as root using a default set of
configuration options, see the file QUICKSTART in the Drone
distribution.

CURRENT STABLE VERSION

The current stable version of Drone is still 1.03. You should use that
version if you would just like to try Drone.

Drone 2.90.0 is a development release, intended for developers, not
end users.  The eventual stable release for users will be Drone 3.0.0.
While it is usable and works under normal conditions, Drone 2.90.0 is
not feature-complete and likely contains many bugs.  You should only
attempt to run this version if you are comfortable compiling,
installing, and debugging software. It may corrupt your hard drive,
clog your network, crash your machine, get you fired or expelled, ruin
your love life, and give you the marthambles. You have been
warned. Caveat utens!

LICENSES

The programs in the Drone system are licensed under the GNU General
Public License (GPL). The libraries are licensed under the GNU Library
General Public License (LGPL). 

AVAILABILITY

The Drone home page is at <http://drone.sourceforge.net/>. The Drone
project homepage, current stable and development releases, mailing
lists, bug tracking system, and source code repository are hosted at
SourceForge <http://sourceforge.net/projects/drone/>.

Drone 1.03 is at
<http://download.sourceforge.net/drone/drone-1.03.tar.gz>.

You can download Drone 2.90.0 at
<http://download.sourceforge.net/drone/Drone-2.90.0.tar.gz>.  

MAILING LISTS

To receive announcements of future Drone releases, please subscribe to
the drone-announce email list at
<http://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/drone-announce>.
Future announcements will be sent to that list only; it is moderated and
low-volume.

You may also want to subscribe to the drone-users email list, for
questions and discussion related to using Drone:
<http://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/drone-users>.

HACKERS WANTED

Patches and bug reports are always welcome. In particular, the
following projects are available:

- Write your own custom Drone application or script in your language
of choice using the libDrone API

- Port or reimplement Drone for another platform, such as Windows or
MacOS

- Wrap the libDrone API in Objective C objects for use within Swarm
<http://www.swarm.org/>

The Drone CVS source code repository is available for anonymous
read-only access through the Drone homepage
<http://drone.sourceforge.net/>.

-- 
Ted Belding                              address@hidden 
University of Michigan Center for the Study of Complex Systems
Homepage: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~streak/
PGP key:  http://www-personal.umich.edu/~streak/pgp-key.html



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