+1, looks like there are plenty of examples. Agree with Phil, how could we make things lighter or easier?
I mean to get more release out. Jean-Louis 2013/10/6 Phil Steitz <phil.ste...@gmail.com> > > > > On Oct 6, 2013, at 1:11 PM, Oliver Heger <oliver.he...@oliver-heger.de> > wrote: > > > > Hi Christian, > > > > Am 06.10.2013 21:44, schrieb Christian Grobmeier: > >> James, > >> > >> thank you. > >> > >> I believe Commons is in a bad shape. > >> > >> Look at Commons Collections. Before 4 years somebody > >> said Guava is more modern, he his answer seems to be widely accepted. > >> http://stackoverflow.com/a/1444467/690771 > >> This guy said we have no generics. What did we do in the past 4 years? > >> > http://search.maven.org/#search%7Cgav%7C1%7Cg%3A%22commons-collections%22%20AND%20a%3A%22commons-collections%22 > >> > >> > >> Nothing. At least nothing visible. Its fine we have a beta. I wonder why > >> we haven't managed > >> to officially release this? The last release is from 2008. > >> > >> I did consider to put my JSON component to Commons. But I didn't. > >> Reason: I really need the component > >> and I calculated how long it would take to release it here. I thought, > >> it's not helping me > >> to develop it here. I simply don't have the time. > >> > >> I thought a long while about it. > >> > >> We had discussions like: do we really need Generics? It works without! > >> Do we really drop an outdated JDK? We might have users > >> who run JDK 1.3! And so on. Finally this led us to the situation where > >> almost all of our users seem to have JDK 1.3 and > >> are not interested in generics - in 2013. The users who want modern > >> features go to Guava. We maintain legacy code. And seriously, a lot of > >> code works without generics. This is no reason to not include them. > >> > >> We discuss magic strings in the sandbox. Why? We don't need to discuss > >> that. Before we release we can simply check Sonar. Safe the time to > >> discuss. Fix it or leave it to Sonar to report it. > >> > >> We seem to think perfect documentation is more valuable then quick > >> releases. Is it? > >> > >> We seem to be proud of our build. I am not. It's complex. It's no fun. > >> Releases should be do-able in a short time, maybe > >> even automated. > >> > >> It is so sad that lot of good features like Collections with Generics > >> were blocked such a long time or drowning in discussions. > >> > >> I agree we should support old users. But if we don't have the manpower, > >> we can't support them. They need to accept we are moving on. We are > >> blocked with our backwards compatible ideas and innovation is far away. > >> > >> When I spoke to young developers about Commons they asked me if it still > >> exists. Nobody of them is interested in our community. > >> > >> For the mission statement I would wish to see things like that: > >> > >> Commons Components… > >> > >> …are released quickly and often > >> …do use modern JDKs and support old JDKs only as long as they are > >> supported by Oracle > >> …we make use of modern Java features when they are available > >> …can be easily released > >> …can be released without having 100% perfect documentation or perfect > >> implementations > >> …are build by Community who wants to learn, experiment and create new > >> features more than by Community which wants to be backwards compatible > >> for a long time > >> …are allowed to release major versions with api breaks as they want > >> > >> Cheers > >> Christian > > I agree with many of your points. Another example is [csv] which is > > about to be released for ages. Here, I think, the main impediment is > > that we try to come up with a *perfect* API because due to our rules of > > backwards compatibility it is so difficult to correct any mistakes later. > > > > I still think that backwards compatibility is very important, but we > > really should define a process which allows us to experiment with new > APIs. > > > > As a suggestion to improve this situation, could we agree on an alpha > > release process allowing us to push releases with the aim of getting > > community feedback? Where we explicitly state that incompatible changes > > are possible (and likely)? > > > > We did something similar with [collections] 4, but there were many > > limitations (the release was not allowed to be uploaded to Maven central > > for instance). If we did such experimental releases more often, there > > would hopefully not be the fear of defining a broken API, and we would > > see more releases. > > +1 let's agree on how to do alphas. > > Phil > > > > Oliver > > > >> > >>> On 6 Oct 2013, at 20:30, James Carman wrote: > >>> > >>> All, > >>> > >>> The Apache Commons project seems to be languishing as of late and we > >>> need some rejuvenation. Perhaps we should try to define our mission > >>> as a project. What are our goals? What do we want to accomplish? > >>> Who are our users/customers? What non-functional qualities do we want > >>> our software to exhibit? How do we want to conduct ourselves? How > >>> often do we want to do releases? What else? > >>> > >>> Sincerely, > >>> > >>> James > >>> > >>> --------------------------------------------------------------------- > >>> To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@commons.apache.org > >>> For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@commons.apache.org > >> > >> > >> --- > >> http://www.grobmeier.de > >> @grobmeier > >> GPG: 0xA5CC90DB > >> > >> --------------------------------------------------------------------- > >> To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@commons.apache.org > >> For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@commons.apache.org > > > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > > To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@commons.apache.org > > For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@commons.apache.org > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@commons.apache.org > For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@commons.apache.org > > -- Jean-Louis
