[virt-tools-list] ANNOUNCE: nbdkit 1.4.0 - an NBD server toolkit with stable plugin ABI and permissive license

[Richard W.M. Jones]

NBD is a protocol for accessing Block Devices (hard disks and
disk-like things) over a Network.

'nbdkit' is a toolkit for creating NBD servers.

The key features are:

 * Multithreaded NBD server written in C with good performance.
 * Minimal dependencies for the basic server.
 * Liberal license (BSD) allows nbdkit to be linked to proprietary
   libraries or included in proprietary code.
 * Well-documented, simple plugin API with a stable ABI guarantee.
   Lets you export "unconventional" block devices easily.
 * You can write plugins in C, Perl, Python, OCaml, Ruby or [new!] Tcl.

I'm pleased to announce the release of the new stable branch 1.4.

Download it here: http://download.libguestfs.org/nbdkit/1.4-stable/

There are many new features since the previous stable branch (1.2):

 * You can write plugins in Tcl.
 * Other new plugins: ext2, random, zero.
 * New filters: blocksize, fua, log, nozero, 
 * Bash tab completion of nbdkit commands.
 * TLS Pre-Shared Keys (PSK) authentication.
 * We now default to the newstyle protocol, use -o to select oldstyle.
 * On-demand ramping of thread pool.
 * TRIM support in the file plugin.
 * Reworked error handling.
 * New can_zero, can_fua methods and better handling of FUA.
 * New nbdkit_realpath function.
 * nbdkit_parse_size rewritten.
 * Better handling of shutdown path to ensure plugins can do long cleanups.
 * New PKG_CHECK_VAR variables.
 * Regression test for IPv6 connections.
 * Of course numerous smaller bug fixes and improvements.

Thanks in particular to Eric Blake and Pino Toscano.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
Read my programming and virtualization blog: http://rwmj.wordpress.com
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