Jakarta Newsletter ================== Issue: 0 Date: May 2002 A Jakarta newsletter has been mentioned a few times on the general list and so I figured it was high time that one was produced. The discussions previously seemed to settle on a monthly affair with a a regular change of editorship. The aim is that for the future, different people will take over different sections for a limited period so that nobody gets bogged down with the chore unless they want to - some lists may have a series of volunteers step up, other projects may choose to add newsletter editing as a regular responsibility for each of their active committers.
Hopefully this will lead to a dynamic monthly newsletter that can be sent out on the announcement list (or a new newsletter one) and try to keep people informed of what all the projects are up to without having to monitor all the projects This issue is entirely edited my myself rather than a set of developers and as a direct result is limited to the dev lists I monitor properly. With luck others will help out future issues providing a varied style and more complete content. Rob Oxspring General ======= This month saw the first ever veto of a new committer in the Tomcat subproject. [1] The resulting threads from this discussed how much a person should have to do before being given committer rights [2] and what they should have had to do. This in turn lead to a proposed rethink of the current rights and roles at Jakarta - can non-coders be committers? should people be given voting rights without CVS access? - should they be given CVS access without the hassle of voting rights? The answers seemed to be probably, possibly and probably not respectively [3] On a similar note, there was a brief look at how best to welcome and nurture volunteers to keep Jakarta growing and progressing [4] An announcement of a new in house mail archive using EyeBrowse [5] lead to a few threads regarding the infrastructure available at Jakarta. The main focus was on whether to switch from Bugzilla to Scarab [6,7] although Subversion was also mentioned with anticipation. There was also discussion of the best way to measure project activity and how useful such a metric would be [8]. Related to the infrastructure and to project activity, Maven was advocated by Jon Scott Stevens as a build system we should all be using. The ensuing flame war included a lot of Centipede vs Maven, XSL vs Velocity, and other Ego clashes. The result seems to have been that some commons projects have switched to maven and that several people have begun to think about what is and isn't provided by the Forest / Gump / Maven / Centipede projects - Surely good things will come. Instead of pointing to specific threads here I'll just suggest that you search the archives for the countless threads along the lines of "Quick! convert all your projects to maven!", "You make the decision", "You guys are so funny", and "[PROPOSAL] Centaven and Friends". It was noted that the general list seems to be targeted for advertising Jakarta support but that there should be a better place for this. The discussion [9] lead to a new page on the web site listing providers of Jakarta support [10]. Should database related technology have its own Apache project? the theme of a language per project at Apache could be lost, but is this a problem? Read the full thread [11] and see what you think. [1] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102221590900002&r=1&w=2&n=11 [2] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102226344500002&r=1&w=2&n=24 [3] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102228162200005&r=1&w=2&n=99 [4] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102229761100002&r=1&w=2&n=11 [5] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102045108100002&r=1&w=2&n=23 [6] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102045747000001&r=1&w=4&n=14 [7] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102194344600001&r=1&w=2&n=10 [8] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102112917400003&r=1&w=2&n=12 [9] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102127725000002&r=1&w=2&n=27 [10] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102139833300001&r=1&w=2&n=12 [11] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102037557900001&r=1&w=2&n=53 Ant === The first beta of version 1.5 was released this month, provoking lots of bug fixing and doc patching [12]. A difference causing some confusion this time round was that the optional.jar is now included as the main distribution [13] and this also moved into discussions of how to repeat the builds and how the rpm version should be created and installed [14]. By the time you read this the second beta should have been released. As well as having to decide whether to include the optional.jar file, the jaxp implementation also cropped up. The crux of the discussion revolves around whether we should be distributing Xalan as well as Xerces, and indeed, whether we are allowed not to? See the discussion [15,16] for the breakdown of pros and cons. Checking for compatibility with Mac OS X is important for the next release as there were some problems to be fixed [17]. Luckily a volunteer has stepped up to help out with OS X specific testing and debugging[18]. A new mechanism for selecting files in a file set has been developed to overcome the limitations of the old include / exclude system. The new system is no longer limited to filenames alone and allows arbitrary combinations of "selectors" to define the file set of interest. The built in selectors provide selection based on filename, path information, date, size and custom selectors are also available for use. The additions this month were more relating to documentation [19] and some tests [20] before the Ant 1.5 release. Ever wanted to slap some build information into a splash screen? well the ImageManip task from Kevin Z Grey will allow all this and more [21]. Delete task follows symlinks - With a bit of luck this has finally been resolved [22]. Also the propertyfile task has been broken for a little while but should now be working properly again [23]. Should taskdefs and typedefs that share the same classpath share a single class loader? the opinions are mixed and the short term solution is a bit unclear [24]. Long term, the antlib concept should fix this and the myrmidon guys have been discussing their solution in another thread [25]. Should ant default to 1.1 compatible byte code even when using Java 1.4 which takes a different default?[26] [12] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102022010200001&r=1&w=2&n=31 [13] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102035217500003&r=1&w=2&n=32 [14] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=101975041700004&r=1&w=2&n=33 [15] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102228254400003&r=1&w=2&n=11 [16] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102227737900002&r=1&w=2&n=11 [17] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102159896900003&r=1&w=2&n=15 [18] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102132176000005&r=1&w=2&n=3 [19] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102071136100004&r=1&w=2&n=12 [20] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102273392200004&r=1&w=2&n=14 [21] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102202542200005&r=1&w=2&n=12 [22] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=100073682800004&r=1&w=2&n=10 [23] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=100339510100002&r=1&w=2&n=12 [24] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102217241700002&r=1&w=2&n=22 [25] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102068167000001&r=1&w=2&n=17 [26] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102148430600003&r=1&w=2&n=21 Commons ======= The next release of the collections package should contain an implementation of the sequenced hash map that better fits the spec by throwing ConcurrentModificationException[27]. Additionally Lazy collections were discussed [28], i.e. collections that populate themselves on access. And finally trees should be making an appearance in future collections releases, allowing integration with JTrees, and potentially with RedBlack, Binary, AVL and other implementations if appropriate[29]. Ever wondered about the differences between Latka and Anteater? Ivelin Ivanov did and sparked off an informative discussion on how the alternatives compare [30]. The Log4J people want to add features using some commons code, but this depends on commons logging which causes problems both philosophical and technical. See the discussion [31] for the proposed solutions to the problem. The pool guys are have bumped into the old problem of deprecation and wanting to change the signatures of some methods. The decision seemed to be that the change is ok, but the issue of compatibility with Java 1.4 cropped up again too [32]. [27] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102088150100001&r=1&w=2&n=13 [28] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102165202400001&r=1&w=2&n=13 [29] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102219299500004&r=1&w=2&n=10 [30] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102151971700001&r=1&w=2&n=12 [31] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102103609500002&r=1&w=2&n=34 [32] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=102023488700001&r=1&w=2&n=15 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
