A new rsyslog v8-stable is coming up soon. It will not just be the next iteration of 8.2, instead it will be a new feature release based on the current 8.3 devel. So be prepared to welcome 8.4. Frequent followers may wonder why 8.4 is ready. Originally, we planned to release it after the summer break. The reason is simple: its ready to come up, albeit with a little less functionality than originally anticipated.

We were (and are) busy working on the rsyslog Windows Agent, which gets a fresh brush up of its engine. It’ll be even better (and faster) as before, but that also meant that we had less time to spent on Linux rsyslog. It turned out that we are primarily doing maintenance and bug fixing on v8-devel the past couple of weeks, just as it normally happens before a new stable branch comes up. So the code has matured. At the same time, we get very good feedback for 8.2 in general, which really makes us believe that v8 fully replaces v7. The bad news is that 8.3 is currently missing the promised non-C support for input modules. However, it’s easy to do this via the regular syslog() API, so this doesn’t look like it’s overly important. In short, this means 8.3 is ready for prime time and we won’t defer it for longer than really required. Just think about how many folks have asked about non-C actions or the ability to clear out dynafiles after an inactivity timeout.

We released 8.3.3 last week, and it is scheduled to be the last 8.3 version (if nothing really important comes up). We are still working on some rough edges, which we hopefully can smoothen within the next couple of days. If possible, we’ll move them into 8.4.0. We hope to be able to release 8.4.0 next week or the week thereafter, so we get a shiny new stable before the summer break.

Also, we will finally officially drop community development support for v7. This will probably even happen this week. As usual, that doesn’t mean v7 is put into the waste bin. We’ll continue to apply patches to it, and we expect that distros will carry it for a while. Even new v7 releases may happen from time to time. But it’s no longer a version that you can expect to receive community support on (of course, rsyslog support contract customers will also be supported on outdated versions, so relax if that is you – but that’s a different story).

We hope you are looking forward to 8.4. If you can, please also help with testing 8.3.3.