ANNOUNCE: Exscript 2.0

[knipknap]

Introduction
-------------
Exscript is a Python module and template processor for automating
Telnet or SSH sessions. Exscript supports a wide range of features,
such as parallelization, AAA authentication methods, TACACS, and a
very simple template language. Please refer to the project page for
updated documentation (see the links at the bottom of this
announcement).

New since 0.9.16
------------------
Exscript 2.0 is without a doubt the most awesome release of Exscript
ever. It is well tested and has already proven to be robust, so use in
a production environment is encouraged.

Changes in this release:

* Exscript's Python API has been completely overhauled and made a lot
simpler. The new API is well documented [1][2].
* Countless utilities for network administrators using Python were
added. For example, it is now trivial to generate reports and emails,
logging is more configurable, new functions for reading and writing
input and output files were added, and user interaction was
simplified.
* The number of dependencies was reduced to make the installation
easier.
* Exscript is now almost 100% unit tested. That means greatly enhanced
stability and reliability.
* Support for threading was improved, leading to better performance
when using a large number of parallel connections.
* The SSH support was greatly improved.
* Exscript now includes some useful Tkinter widgets for monitoring the
Exscript Queue.
* Support for Pseudo devices: It is now possible to emulate a fake
device that behaves like a router. This can come in handy for testing.
* Of course, a huge number of bugs was also fixed. I expect this
release to be the most stable one to date. It was also well tested in
production and has handled hundreds of thousands of Telnet connections
in the past few months.

Dependencies
-------------
* Python 2.2 or greater
* Python-crypto
* paramiko (optional, for SSH2 support)
* Python-pexpect (optional, for SSH1 support)
* OpenSSH (optional, for SSH1 support)

Download Exscript
------------------
Release: http://github.com/knipknap/exscript/downloads
Git: http://code.google.com/p/exscript/source

Links
------
[1] Exscript Documentation: http://wiki.github.com/knipknap/exscript/documentation
[2] Exscript Python API: http://knipknap.github.com/exscript/api/
[3] Installation Guide: http://wiki.github.com/knipknap/exscript/installation-guide
[4] Exscript home page: http://wiki.github.com/knipknap/exscript/
[5] Mailing list: http://groups.google.com/group/exscript
[6] Bug tracker: http://github.com/knipknap/exscript/issues
[7] Browse the source: http://github.com/knipknap/exscript