On Tue, 2002-12-10 at 21:40, J Aaron Farr wrote: > Hello. Hi!
> The current situation could be grossly summarized as something like: Avalon > Framework has moved (or is moving) from Components to Services (essentially > just an API change) and Fortress is a hopeful ECM replacement and Merlin will > complement both Fortress and Pheonix. However, both Merlin and Fortress are > under development right now, so the current API's aren't necessarily stable. we're not sure yet what merlin will be or where it will go. It could even be thrown away and recoded from scratch! It is that kind of alpha. Fortress is more in a "tweak and fix" mode. > These developments leave me, a new Avalon user starting a new project, with the > following questions: > > 1. Since I'm starting from scratch on this project of mine, I should stay away > from Component and ComponentManager and use the Service equivilants. [Also > perhaps I should avoid ServiceManager.release()?] Is that correct? yep, though release() should be safe. > 2. If I should avoid Components, then that means that I should not use those > parts of Excalibur that use Components then, right? However, the alternative > (as I understand it) would be to use Fortress/Merlin which isn't stable. So > now I'm in a bit of a fix -- use the ECM knowing it'll be deprecated or live on > the edge with Fortress/Merlin. Anyone have any advice? you're safe linking code to fortress I think; while it isn't stable the API is a lot less likely to change. OTOH, if you don't have a business need for this anytime soon, merlin and all experimental container work is real good fun :D > 3. Since personally I'd rather live on the edge (besides, I'd have a better > chance to bug fix and contribute code to the projects), just how stable are > Fortress and Merlin? Fortress is on release status "soon". There's some remaining 'stuff'. How fast that remaining 'stuff' is done as always depends on how many people have how much time to do it. It might have a release as soon as christmas, could take somewhat longer. Merlin is stable in the sense that you can compile and run it and it will run without problems for a month or two, doing mostly what it should. In every other sense it's not :D Note there's loads of ways to contribute to lots of things. We always like feedback, and documentation always needs work. Just looking around the cvs modules you'll see your work cut out for you. If not, we'll be happy to give some suggestions ;) > ECM has a lot of nice code, like the > ExcaliberComponentManager (as mentioned in the "Developing with Apache Avalon" > documentation by Berin Loritsch). Does the Service interface have solid helper > classes and utilities like this? yep. Avalon-Phoenix (http://jakarta.apache.org/avalon/phoenix) for example (which is for big standalone apps). Avalon-Phoenix is rock-solid. > I'd really like any suggestions anyone has about starting new projects based on > Avalon. Since I can start fresh I want to start right. Any thoughts or > advice? to really get to grips with avalon development you need lots of examples (well I did). Look at some real-world avalon based apps (Cocoon and James are prominent examples) as well as some simple demos that actually do something (http://jakarta.apache.org/avalon/phoenix/getting-started.html for info on a HelloWorld server). It also makes sense to look at the container side of the code, rather than just the components. You get a much 'deeper' understanding that way. The initial starting point for this in the future is ment to be Tweety (http://jakarta.apache.org/avalon/excalibur/tweety/, downloads atm only from http://cvs.apache.org/~leosimons/excalibur/tweety/ or cvs) but it's not quite finished yet. Other than that, just start coding and pop the questions in this general direction when they come up! regards and good luck, - Leo -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
