Given it's a beta, and some major features are lacking, it's still great stuff.
Until now, development of the 2.0 mainline had two major focusses: API
usability and providing an upgrade path for existing users. The first one
required major API changes, the second one conversion scripts.

This beta release allows you to check most 'C++' and 'scripting' aspects of
2.0 and allows you to grasp a first 'look-and-feel' of what RTT 2.0 offers.
Following beta releases (1.99.x) will expose the improved CORBA transport and
data type generation. The core API and primitives of 2.0.0 will only differ
slightly (or not) from this release. From now on, it's getting the add-ons to
work.

For the latest information, check out the 2.0.0-beta1 wiki page:
http://www.orocos.org/wiki/rtt/rtt-20/rtt-200-beta1

It links to a bunch of useful sub-pages concerning what changed and how users
can upgrade.

Where to find it ?

There are tar balls and online docs available in the devel section of the
server kindly provided by the University of Leuven:

http://people.mech.kuleuven.be/~orocos/pub/devel/rtt/v1.99.1/doc/api/html/
http://people.mech.kuleuven.be/~orocos/pub/devel/rtt/v1.99.1/orocos-
rtt-1.99.1-src.tar.gz
http://people.mech.kuleuven.be/~orocos/pub/devel/ocl/v1.99.1/doc/api/html/
http://people.mech.kuleuven.be/~orocos/pub/devel/ocl/v1.99.1/orocos-
ocl-1.99.1-src.tar.gz

And the updated exercises:
http://people.mech.kuleuven.be/~orocos/pub/devel/examples/rtt/tutorial

Other official code resources for 2.0 are my git repositories on github: rtt-
examples, orocos-rtt and orocos-ocl. Check out the ocl-2.0-mainline and
rtt-2.0-mainline code. I will not host 2.0 in an SVN repository.

What's not in here ?

See the caveats section on the wiki. Most notably, CORBA transport is still
broken, which means no remote access to applications. Also some unit tests
will fail.

What will this release allow you to do ?

- Test porting effort to the RTT 2.0 API.
We have created scripts for converting application code to the 2.0 API,
regarding the C++ part. CORBA interfaces will change after this beta, so no
scripts for these exist yet.
- Test RTT 2.0 on your distribution/target.
A lot of code changed, not all compilers or operating systems could be tested.
Now is the time to see if 2.0 *at least compiles* on your system.

What can you do to help ?

- Test the conversion scripts and update the wiki or scripts if you find
issues.
- Update wiki pages, installation notes etc if you encounter inconsistencies.
- Send patches against this codebase, preferably using a git repository.
- Provide feedback on documentation or API changes.

Are we there yet ?

I hope to have beta2 ready this month with CORBA transport and your feedback.
We'll see what April brings.

My special thanks go out to Sylvain Joyeux (data flow rework), Stephen Roderick
(TLSF stuff) , Jean Sreng (Win32 porting), the team at Onera (beta-testing),
Markus Klotzbuecher (yammering about consistency) and Klaas Gadeyne (whining
about usability). We would be lost without us.

Enjoy !
Peter