[rancid] RANCID, the next generation?

[Ed Ravin]

Dear RANCID gang:

I'd like to announce that thanks to my public-sprited employer and
a sacrifice of much of my spare time, I've been able to put RANCID
through a complete rewrite.

The new version supports all of the previous RANCID devices, as
well as many new ones, and everything has been rewritten to be
modular, to use shared script libraries, with re-entrancy,
multi-threading, and a new, well-organized model that allows
for easy extension and customization.

User-controlled configuration now extends to device definitions,
connection method definitions, the commands to run on a router, and
what to do with each section of the router's config file (sorting,
censoring out passwords, etc.).  It's so user-configurable that I've
been able to implement nearly every patch and feature request discussed
on this list in the past three years using just the new configuration
settings.

I would have announced it earlier this month, but I had trouble
coming up with a new acronym.  How do you follow an act like RANCID,
a mature, reliable, high quality, full featured software package with
a catchy and appealing name that's also an unbeatable acronym?

So please welcome PUTRID - the Perl/Unix/TCL Router Information
Database.  It's not any better than RANCID -- but it is stronger,
even more mature (more ripe?), and ranks up there with the best of them
in the spirit of open-sourced projects.

As of midnight April 1, downloads are available now from putrid.sf.net,
and the CVS repository will be set up shortly.  Thanks again to everyone
on this list who've been using RANCID and gave me the inspiration
to see this project to its current state.

	-- Ed