I don't think I "have any vote" here, but I feel similar to Scott. My project
is happily using xerces-c/xalan-c for a quite a long time. On our side, we're
not asking any questions on the mailing lists generally because it works for
what we need - there's nothing to ask per se. I have seen several other large
vendors using xalan-c, based on the fact that they deliver the dlls. I think
xerces/xalan is actively in use, even if maybe it doesn't appear that way.
My primary concern is that xerces/xalan continue to build/run on new compilers
- I don't expect any new features. I have also found that migration to other
libraries is certainly not a no-brainer.
I sympathize with the desire to wind this down, and certainly Roger you
shouldn't be somehow forced to continue involvement, but it does seem premature
to "put it in the attic"...although maybe another issue is defining what that
really means.
Rob Conde
________________________________
From: Scott Furry <scott.wl.fu...@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 19, 2022 3:13 AM
To: c-users@xalan.apache.org <c-users@xalan.apache.org>; d...@xalan.apache.org
<d...@xalan.apache.org>
Subject: Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
I'm only an occasional user of Xerces-C/Xalan-C libraries but retirement seems
wrong to me. Understandable. Lamentable. Still wrong.
Reading the suggestion of placing Xalan-C into 'the attic', I dove online to
plan a migration strategy should it become necessary. I was not pleased with
what I found:
- Saxon has a `community edition` but is only interested in selling licenses.
- Folks over at libxml2/libxslt go to great lengths to stipulate that Gnome is
not required - but library has its 'C' quirks. C++ wrappers of various type and
quality abound.
The previous move by Oracle to 'abandoned' the Netbeans IDE to the Apache
Foundation was not pleasant for me. After seven release iterations the IDE
still doesn't have a decent C/C++ setup comparable to the Netbeans 8.2 plugin.
Everyone in the Apache Netbeans project seems focused on Java. I have an
overall negative impression of Apache projects as a result.
I can appreciate that few have the time and resources to commit to maintain
code. We've gone from "The Cathedral and The Bazaar" to silos ("Big Box
Stores") of companies - Ubuntu, Gnome, Red Hat, et al. The notion of the
dedicated developer toiling away doing incredible work in obscurity is becoming
quaint. XKCD pretty much nailed it with the 'Dependency' comic
(https://xkcd.com/2347/).
Given the long history of the Xerces-C/Xalan-C, as well as few decent
compatible replacements, I would hope the code could be maintained in the
future.
/rant
Scott
On 2022-10-17 11:43, Roger Leigh wrote:
Hi Gary,
Thanks to you and everyone else for responding. It looks like the final tally
is 3 (a) and 1 (b). I hope this meets the required quorum.
So assuming this is OK with everyone, would it be OK for you as the PMC
chairman to handle the moving of the Xalan-C project to the Attic? Would it
also be possible to remove me from the PMC (or does the PMC get dissolved
entirely)?
Do we want to recommend that organisations such as the various distributors of
Xalan-C retire it at this time as well? Or just notify them of the move to the
Attic and let them exercise their own judgement on the risks?
Kind regards,
Roger
From: Gary Gregory <garydgreg...@gmail.com><mailto:garydgreg...@gmail.com>
Sent: 15 October 2022 12:42
To: d...@xalan.apache.org<mailto:d...@xalan.apache.org>
Cc: c-users@xalan.apache.org<mailto:c-users@xalan.apache.org>
Subject: Re: [VOTE] Moving Xalan-C to the Attic
Retirement of Xalan-C seems ok to me if only due to my lack of involvement with
it; I've only helped on the Java side IIRC. So that would be (a) for me.
Gary
On Fri, Oct 7, 2022, 08:19 Roger Leigh
<rle...@codelibre.net<mailto:rle...@codelibre.net>> wrote:
Dear all,
It’s been over three months since my original email on this subject. There is
a related discussion about this on the Xerces-C++ mailing list just now, and it
would be useful to reach a conclusion on this for Xalan-C as well.
I've updated the git statistics I did earlier in the year, which can be viewed
or downloaded here: [xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx icon]
xerces-xalan-git-monthly.xlsx<https://codelibreconsulting.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Opensourcesoftware/EabAzxgzU3pCjUSKSVvWjZgBlUGZUb91q2PVMkGk1oaIHw?e=MVBvPA>.
There are no changes—there has not been a single commit to the source
repository since 2021. There has not been any change to the maintenance status
of the project since my last email: there are no active maintainers, no one has
shown any interest in doing any maintenance, and none of the previous
maintainers who are still present actually use Xalan any longer—so there is
little prospect of previously active maintainers returning. I myself will be
leaving the project once this question is answered irrespective of the
outcome—I no longer use Xalan-C, I have no time to commit to it for future work
and releases, I just want to see it retired gracefully so that we don’t leave
anyone with the mistaken impression that this is a project which is active and
well supported when it is most certainly not. This is not a library which new
projects should be considering to use.
This is the commit history since 01 Oct 2012:
$ git shortlog -s --oneline --all --since "01 OCT 2012"
1 Benjamin Beasley
1 Bill Blough
1 Biswapriyo Nath
1 Kvarec Lezki
182 Roger Leigh
29 Steven J. Hathaway
I would like for the PMC to vote on the future of the project. Do we
1. Retire the project to the Attic
2. Keep the project going
I’m not sure if I’m formally a PMC member or not, but realistically I’m the
only one who has done any work on the project for the past 8 years. So if I
can vote on this I’ll vote for (a).
Kind regards,
Roger
From: rle...@codelibre.net<mailto:rle...@codelibre.net>
<rle...@codelibre.net<mailto:rle...@codelibre.net>>
Sent: 22 June 2022 23:21
To: d...@xalan.apache.org<mailto:d...@xalan.apache.org>;
c-users@xalan.apache.org<mailto:c-users@xalan.apache.org>
Subject: Future of xalan-c
Dear all,
I wanted to write this email to sound out where the project is, where it is
going, and whether or not it has a future. If it does not have a future, is it
time to wrap up the project and move it to the Attic?
To start with, a bit of context. This is a summary of the project’s commit
activity over the previous 22 years:
[cid:image003.png@01D8DA4E.7333F9C0]
Back in July 2020, just a little under two years ago, I released Xalan-C 1.12.
This was the first release since Xalan-C 1.11 in October 2012, and it
incorporated a number of patches which had been accumulated over the course of
years by several downstream distributors.
https://apache.github.io/xalan-c/releases.html#major-changes shows the major
changes in this release. On the above graph, this release is comprised of the
commits from 2019 to 2020. I was the sole committer for this release.
The previous 1.11 release was made in October 2012 with Steven J. Hathaway
being the principal contributor.
The previous 1.10 release was made in October 2005 with David N Berton and
Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
The previous 1.9 release was made in December 2004 with June Ng, Matthew Hoyt,
David N Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
The previous 1.8 release was made in April 2004 with Matthew Hoyt, David N
Berton and Dmitry Hayes being the principal contributors.
The main points I’d like to make here are the following:
* Active development of Xalan-C effectively finished with the 1.10 release
in 2005. The vast majority of work since then has been little more than
essential bugfixing and portability work to support new platforms and
toolchains.
* 1.11 was a bugfix release. It was primarily comprised of essential
bugfixes, and fixes for building with different toolchains on different
platforms and some documentation work. There was one code improvement of note:
“Add number and nodeset types as top-level stylesheet parameters”
* 1.12 was a bugfix release. It was primarily comprised of essential
bugfixes, and fixes for building on different platforms, with the CMake support
generalising that to build on current platforms, plus the documentation switch
to Markdown. There were zero new features or improvements outside essential
bugfixing.
* There is essentially ~zero developer mailing list activity
* There is essentially ~zero user mailing list activity
* Community involvement on GitHub is present but at very low and sporadic
levels. We have three PRs from contributors other than myself
(https://github.com/apache/xalan-c/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed). One was a
triviality, two were portability fixes just altering platform-specific ifdefs.
There is one open PR
(https://github.com/apache/xalan-c/pulls?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Apr). This looks
simple but I’m not sure of the impact in case of unexpected subtleties.
I became involved in the project for pragmatic reasons—I worked on a project
using XSLT and picked up Xalan-C as a dependency. I wrote and contributed the
CMake support and worked on the 1.12 release for that reason. But I don’t know
the underlying codebase, and I can’t do any real feature development or deep
bugfixing. I don’t have the expertise with XSLT, or the time to do this. And
since I no longer work on any projects using Xalan-C, I’m no longer
realistically able to do any further maintenance work either. If I hadn’t done
the most recent work and made the 1.12 release, it’s most likely that the
incorporation of community patchsets and making a point release would not have
happened. No one aside from me has worked on Xalan-C since Steven J Hathaway’s
last work in 2012.
I don’t personally think there is sufficient community involvement or developer
involvement to realistically support Xalan-C as an active project in any sense.
There is no one working on it. And while I’m sure there are some users,
there’s next to no active engagement of users as a community.
I’ve made a good effort to keep the project going for the near- to medium-term.
The CMake build made it possible to build on all contemporary platforms. The
documentation switch to Markdown made it possible to build without obsolete and
unavailable Java libraries. The bugfixes we included in 1.12 fixed a number of
critical issues. So 1.12 should serve as a usable release for the foreseeable
future even in the absence of further development.
However, I don’t see a future for anything beyond 1.12 unless there is a
dramatic change. XSLT usage is declining, and Xalan-C doesn’t support XSLT 2.0
and beyond. Rather than letting the current situation linger on indefinitely,
I wanted to suggest we take stock of where we are, and if there is consensus to
do so, I think it would be advisable to draw a line at this point and end the
project gracefully.
Kind regards,
Roger
