[Discuss-gnuradio] libusrp/libusrp2 vs uhd plans

[Johnathan Corgan]

As Ettus Research has announced the UHD software support for USRP1 and
USRP2 is stabilizing.  There are many long awaited features that will
become part of this next generation code, and the question has come up
about the future of the current GNU Radio support for this hardware.

We will address this in three stages.

Firstly, the current libusrp/libusrp2/gr-usrp/gr-usrp2 components will
become part of the 3.3 stable release series.  This is intended as a
measure to support existing user code that depends on this
functionality, and we will maintain this with bug fixes as needed.
The GNU Radio release tarballs will include the host and firmware
code, and the gnuradio.org website will host binaries for the
associated FPGA image and firmware images.  The corresponding FPGA
source code will continue to be hosted/distributed by Ettus Research.
This gives long-term support for existing users who do not plan to
upgrade.

Secondly, during the 3.4 development series, we will incorporate the
gr-uhd GNU Radio host code blocks, and begin transitioning our
examples, demos, and other code that uses gr-usrp/gr-usrp2 to use
gr-uhd instead.  This will be gated by available
functionality/stability of the Ettus Research code.

Finally, also during the 3.4 development series, we will extract the
libusrp/libusrp2 code (but not gr-usrp or gr-usrp2) into its own
stand-alone distribution and remove it from GNU Radio proper.  This
will give developers the choice of installing the "FSF" version of the
libraries or the Ettus Research libraries (or both) as desired, and
GNU Radio will install gr-usrp/gr-usrp2 and/or gr-uhd depending on
what was detected during configuration.

It is intended that as of stable series 3.4, future GNU Radio
development will continue around the Ettus Research UHD code features,
and only critical bug fixes in the stand-alone FSF library be
considered.

Please feel free to respond with any questions/concerns.

Johnathan Corgan