So was Corral, for the fourth rewrite or so.
Exactly! So, how is that a knock on Corral in comparison to re-doing the UI again on 9.10?
That's standard BSD procedure.
Exactly! So, switching to 9.10 doesn't prevent the need for big changes, right?
Much of the work is said to be done. FreeNAS 9.10 can be managed from an API already, at least to a very significant degree.
It is said to be done. Is it said to be bug tested? I see no evidence to suggest that bug testing or release will go any smoother for that new work. Why would it?
No, just the jails manager.
What part of the jails system doesn't involve the manager?
It's about not breaking everything at once. What did work properly in Corral? Samba had some weird issues, replication was only supported to other Corral servers (!), 9pfs needed to be pulled, there was close to zero documentation, the UI was a dead end, important stuff was rewritten and now needs to be independently debugged and fixed (including DHCP)... Just what is going to be salvaged here faster and better than it would be on 9.10?
Corral is working great for me. Zero problems with Samba. I upgraded my system to replicate to. Easy. Documentation was being put together at a faster pace than I remember it coming together for any previous build. The UI, even if the framework needed to change, was ahead of 9.10 by nature of it having been designed. It is far easier to apply an existing design with a new framework than it is to re-design AND apply a new framework.
Nothing needs to be "salvaged". Simply prioritize bugs and move forward with them like any other release. Corral is way ahead of 9.10 in terms of architecture, features, design and vision. It does not make sense to step backwards to a system that was already old 2 years ago and kludge features onto it. Maybe that would have been sensible to consider way back when FreeNAS 10 was started. But, now, the heavy lifting is already done in Corral.
I agree with an earlier poster. It sounds like there is more to this story that isn't being put out clearly. Did the developers of Corral get let go (or left on their own)? Is this decision being made primarily because the developers taking over from here know the 9.10 code but do not know the Corral code?
Ok, so what about 9pfs not actually working reliably? Issues importing encrypted pools? Weird Samba issues? The fact that the so-adored GUI barely works on Chrome and nowhere else and constantly irritates people with expired token messages? No localization support at all? Zero support for screen readers?
This is definitely not good QA.
What is 9pfs?
Encrypted pools have always been problematic. In 9.10 also. That's why additional warnings have been given when using them, including in 9.10.
Don't know what samba issues you are seeing. Samba works fine for me.
I use Chrome. Works fine for me on Corral. Seeing A bug report from A person about a browser is anecdotal. You're not seeing the many others who do not have that issue.
Localization is often not included in initial release versions of software. For obvious reasons.
Supporting screen readers (as well as localization) are not QA issues at all. They are decisions.
I find it remarkable that, to some degree, you are representing FreeNAS as a forum mod, while trashing the decisions and effort that FreeNAS has made over the last year+ (as well as the effort that many users pitched in to help troubleshoot, detail feature ideas, etc.). What kind of message are users supposed to take from that?
Why? The only reason I can think of is "setting up a crapton of FreeNAS servers" and, in that case, muscle memory quickly develops and the UI matters little.
Really?
A few reasons:
A) Updating jails/containers.
B) Creating new project spaces/locations/users in a production environment.
C) Giving said users new permissions as needed.
D) Monitoring health of server.
E) Running manual back-ups and other maintenance.
F) Installing new containers/jails. Configuring those. Troubleshooting them as issues come up.
There are many other reasons. It can add up.
Not everyone is just running a fire-and-forget Plex/Downloader.
The bottom line is that TrueNAS pays the bills. The community is a nice bonus. That makes it the priority.
That aside, you're not addressing my point. The community, as a large abstract group, is not involved in the dev process and largely has no clue of what is going on in the code. You can't go around saying that it's all roses if you haven't even looked at it, much less tried to make it work and tried to fix it.
If you disagree, go ahead and pick it up. That is the meaning of open-source, not "complain loudly until the developers do exactly what I want even if they feel that it won't work".
I think that I did address your point as this new comment just brings us back to my same question:
Is the software being developed for users (community or paying) or is it being developed for developers?
I do not need to look at the code in order to have a position on the end product. I am a developer myself. So, if you can find some technical dev explanation for why Corral was bad, I'm pretty sure that I could understand it. To date, nothing like that has been presented. They haven't written that it "won't work". They wrote that it is too much work. Big difference and a legitimate reason for users to be aggravated by after their own investment into Corral (which is work also).
Agreed, but that point had clearly not been reached, as is evident from where we are today.
That is a non-sequitur.
Some people (even those assuming decision-making roles) having the opinion that it wasn't ready is not evidence that it wasn't a good decision.
I cannot. I could manage, but some people would have no clue what to do, especially when faced with a serious lack of documentation. The docs team was explicitly told not to bother until late in the dev process - as preserved in one or two bug reports on the tracker.
So write documentation!
This all demonstrates my point further. The shortest path to the best software is continuing work on Corral. Not reverting back to 9.10.
But were they? None of them seem to work reliably enough for the average user.
They were for me. Obviously. Otherwise, I wouldn't bother writing these posts defending the system.
I do have development experience. But, I'm definitely not above average when it comes to server tech and FreeBSD.
It looks to me like some people didn't want to learn a new system. They want new, cool features, without having to take any time to figure them out. I certainly had to plan time for the transition myself. But, that is just the nature of new software. You can try to offset that by spoon-feeding features (which seems to be the new strategy). But, that doesn't typically result in good software, takes longer to implement new features and in this case wastes a lot of progress that was already made.
You forgot a big one: Accessibility. You're blind? Tough luck, screen readers don't work with the GUI. Oh wait, you need the GUI to be able to setup the CLI for SSH access. Oops, I guess there's no FreeNAS for you. And that's after accessibility was one of the goals for improvement early in the FreeNAS 10 dev process.
Many if not most software does not take accessibility into account in early releases. For obvious reasons.