f31c630c8c was causing
SocketGatheringWriteTest to fail because it does not take the case where
an empty buffer exists in a gathering write.
When there is an empty buffer in a gathering write, the number of
buffers returned by ChannelOutboundBuffer.nioBuffer() and the actual
number of write attemps can differ.
To remove the write requests correctly, a byte transport must use
ChannelOutboundBuffer.removeBytes()
If you are on Linux, you need additional development packages installed on your system, because you'll build the native transport.
Note that this is build-time requirement. JDK 5 (for 3.x) or 6 (for 4.0+) is enough to run your Netty-based application.
Branches to look
The 'master' branch is where the development of the latest major version lives on. The development of all other versions takes place in each branch whose name is identical to <majorVersion>.<minorVersion>. For example, the development of 3.9 and 4.0 resides in the branch '3.9' and the branch '4.0' respectively.