qMp short- and mid-term development plan
The team at qMp has been working hard in the past months to release a new version of the firmware very soon. We have written this post to clarify some questions that have been raised regarding the development plan.
After publishing qMp 3.0.2 Clearance on the 26th November 2014 qMp, we expect to release qMp 3.1 Clearance in early December 2014. The main changes in this release will be:
- Switch to OpenWrt 14.07 Barrier Breaker
- New theme for the user interface (based on Bootstrap)
- BMX6 update (backwards compatible with version compat. 0.16-alpha)
- Support for new devices (a few new Ubiquiti, TP-Link and Ralink/Mediatek-based devices)
- Better control on wireless card modes
Except for eventual bugfixing releases, there will be no more qMp 3.X versions.
Starting on early December, efforts will be targeted towards publishing a new major release, qMp 4.0. This new version will have a lot of changes and interesting features, provided by the still to-be-announced OpenWrt Chaos Calmer released (now in trunk):
- Support for 802.11s mesh wireless mode, which will replace ad hoc mode (legacy)
- Full support for new Ubiquity XW devices and many Ralink/Mediatek low-cost devices
- Initial support for Atheros/MediaTek 802.11ac devices (depending on OpenWrt support)
- Better control on switched Ethernet interfaces
- More intuitive web interface
- ...
We are very excited with the new features that will be added to the following releases, hoping that they will be useful for both quick mesh deployments and Community Networks. At the same time, we encourage everybody to provide feedback and suggestions for the next major release qMp 4.0 and contribute with code. The qMp team is willing to welcome more contributors to the project.
Stay tuned for more news!